Experts working on the extraction of data from mobile phones seized in connection with the judicial case involving alleged bribery at the ANDIS national disability agency have not been able to recover messages deleted from a device of the body’s former head, Diego Spagnuolo.
The phone is one of two handed over by Spagnuolo, from which data was extracted and deleted messages were detected, some of them involving President Javier Milei – for whom the former official was a lawyer – and Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, who is implicated in the case.
In a raid on his Spagnuolo’s in Pilar, another mobile phone was seized, but it contained no information of interest because it was not in use.
The news, confirmed by judicial sources to the Noticias Argentinas news agency, casts a shadow over a key investigative lead in the case.
The lost messages "cannot be recovered due to the way they were deleted," experts with knowledge of the case led by federal prosecutor Franco Picardi and judge Sebastián Casanello told the news agency.
The investigation is currently digging into whether President Javier Milei's sister, Karina Milei, and other top officials accepted vast sums of cash in kickbacks from pharmaceutical sales to ANDIS.
Leaked audio recordings – attributed to Spagnuolo – show the ex-ANIDS chief stating that Karina allegedly collects three percent of his agency's payments for medicine to pharmaceutical company Suizo Argentina.
"Karina gets three percent and one percent goes to the operation," a voice said to be Spagnuolo says in the leaked recordings. He also claims to have informed President Milei about his sister's alleged scheme.
"They take half a million or more per month," the voice continues, apparently noting a monthly take of somewhere between US$500,000 and US$800,000.
More than 50 audio clips have been handed over to the judge leading the case by a journalist.
In them, Spagnuolo is supposedly heard referring to alleged crimes, including kickbacks paid between the Suizo Argentina drug distributor, laboratories and national government officials.
The audio files were leaked by media outlets and on social media on August 19. The government removed Spagnulo from his position thereafter "in light of publicly known events."
The alleged scheme also implicates Eduardo ‘Lule’ Menem, the nephew of former president Carlos Menem, who led Argentina from 1989 to 1999.
The scandal broke just after Congress overruled Milei's veto on a law declaring a disability emergency and allocating more funds to the sector – a major political blow to the president and his budget-slashing approach.
The ongoing investigation was placed under strict legal secrecy by court order for another 10 working days as of Thursday. This effectively means the defendants are denied access to the case file.
Casanello has yet to rule on motions to dismiss the case filed by the Kovalivkers' defence team, led by lawyer Martín Magram.
Examination of other seized mobile phones will begin in the coming days, including those belonging to Eduardo Kovalivker and Jonathan Kovalivker, controlling shareholders of the Suizo Argentina drugstore, the firm at the heart of the alleged kickbacks scandal, and former ANDIS official Daniel Garbellini.
Another mobile phone, belonging to Emannuel Kovalivker, another member of the family controlling Suizo Argentina, could not be examined because it is a latest-generation phone and the suspect has not provided the required passcode.
In a peculiar piece of timing, on Thursday PRO national deputy Patricia Inés Glize promoted a bill to the Buenos Aires City Legislature that would recognise Eduardo Kovalivker, the founder of Suizo Argentina and father to Jonathan and Emmannuel, as a “distinguished personality of culture.”
The nomination, reported by the Pagina/12 newspaper, highlights Kovalivker's "artistic side" as a writer and poet.
Glize, according to reports, is close to National Security Ministry Patricia Bullrich, the former PRO chair who now is aligned with President Milei’s La Libertad Avanza.
For now, the tribute has been shelved, said sources close to the City lawmaker.
– TIMES/NA
Comments