Fired ANDIS chief Diego Spagnuolo could turn whistleblower in graft case

Diego Spagnuolo’s strategy is different from the Kovalivkers.

On Monday, lawyers representing the former head of the ANDIS (Agencia Nacional de Discapacidad) national disability agency asked federal judge Sebastián Casanello for a stay to answer a request from the owners of the Suizo Argentina pharmacy chain for closure of the case based on the argument of "double jeopardy."

As far as Perfil could ascertain, the defence will not advance in any response without seeing the case.

However, another possibility hangs in the air: of Spagnuolo turning "whistleblower" and opening up fully about a huge corruption scandal facing President Javier Milei’s government.

‘Effective collaborator’

Argentina’s régime of whistleblower, formally known as "effective collaborator," permits an indicted person to obtain a reduced sentence in exchange for contributing valuable and verifiable information to a court investigation.

No sooner had Spagnuolo’s voice messages been leaked – in which he could be heard describing a presumed circuit of overpricing and bribery within ANDIS – was it rumoured that this could be his strategy. And more than three weeks on since the scandal erupted, it is becoming an increasingly concrete possibility.

Last week, Martín Magram, the lawyer for Eduardo, Jonathan and Emmanuel Kovalivker, the partners holding a majority share of Suizo Argentina, asked for the investigation of his clients to be closed as "double jeopardy."

The lawyer referred to a case last year when the courts investigated a series of ANDIS contracts in favour of the pharmacy chain. On that occasion the file was shelved due to the "inexistence of any crime."

This was Magram’s second bid to close the case after arguing that the voice messages exposing the scandal have no legal validity. The difficulty of the lawyer’s new strategy is that last year’s investigation looked into the allocation of the contracts, while overpricing and bribery are currently being probed.

Spagnuolo's lawyers, Ignacio Rada Schultze and Juan Aráoz de Lamadrid, did not fall automatically into line with Magram, asking Casanello for a stay to answer.

Before taking any decision, they want to know the details of the file.

Frightened and alone

As his circle repeatedly says, Spagnuolo is in solitude. Despite the government trying to build bridges to coordinate a legal strategy, the ANDIS ex-chief today has no channels of dialogue open with La Libertad Avanza.

The idea of the government trying to approach Spagnuolo is plausible since his words have tainted, apart from the Menems, the one person whom the President trusts most: his sister, Karina.

Any attempt at dialogue is always denied within La Libertad Avanza.

A fortnight after the scandal exploded, Spagnuolo has let the press know that he feared for his life. Nothing has changed and the same fear continues.

Lst week, it was rumoured that Spagnuolo had requested assistance from Poder Ciudadano NGO and that he had presented himself as a plaintiff in the case with the aim of becoming a whistleblower.

Both the organisation and persons close to the ex-official denied the rumour to Perfil.

Everything seems to indicate that if the man who visited Milei in Olivos presidential residence with the greatest frequency since the President took office decides to talk, he will do so alone.

Garbellini

Apart from Spagnuolo and the Kovalivker family, Daniel Garbellini is the other man involved in the case.

According to the leaked voice messages, the former national director for Access to ANDIS Health Services was in charge of coordinating the alleged illegal bribery circuit in representation of Eduardo ‘Lule’ Menem.

Garbellini, dumped from his post as soon as the scandal exploded, decided early on that his strategy would be based on collaborating with the courts. He presented himself in the case, represented by the lawyers Martin Olari Ugrotte and Agustín Biancardi, turning in his mobile telephone alongside his passcode for unblocking it, unlike the brothers Emmanuel and Jonathan Kovalivker.

Furthermore, within his circle they assured that he did not delete any messages, as Spagnuolo reportedly did so before handing in his mobile telephone. Nor did he present any forensic experts on his side for its analysis.

When Casanello informed Garbellini about Magram’s request to quash the trial, his lawyers replied that they had “no comment.” They still had not been able to see the files and thus had no knowledge of the trial. They also asked the judge questions about the voice messages, wanting to know if the raw audio recordings were available to the court or just what had been leaked by the press, if they had been obtained legally and if they were real.

As far as Perfil could ascertain, Garbellini will be keeping a low profile. Those close to him say that the ex-official is stricken and worried about his family.

“He’s jobless and has a family typical of the Greater Buenos Aires middle class, which is not doing so well these days,” they relate. For now, he is waiting for trial secrecy rules to be lifted to decide his next step.