DOLLAR-LADEN SENATOR NABBED
Crossing the international bridge between Brazil and Paraguay in the first minutes of Wednesday, Senator Edgardo Kueider (Peronist-Entre Ríos) was stopped by Paraguayan DNIT tax authorities in a routine control and found to be carrying undeclared sums of over US$200,000 and 600,000 pesos which he was unable to explain, apart from telling Paraguayan media that the money was not his. Kueider was then sent to a Ciudad del Este hotel to await a summons by the local prosecutor on possible money-laundering charges. Although elected on a Frente de Todos ticket in 2019, Kueider has worked closely with the Javier Milei government in the past year and was unsuccessfully proposed by the star spin doctor Santiago Caputo to chair the Intelligence Committee.
MILEI PACKS CPAC
The concluding orator at last Wednesday’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the Hilton Hotel, President Javier Milei urged a redoubled “cultural battle” against “lefties” while reiterating his criticisms of the “mendacious” media. Milei further asserted that La libertad Avanza (LLA) “does not care a hoot about the opinion of politicians on any issue,” affirming that “ideas should never be negotiated.” Ministers Patricia Bullrich (Security) and Luis Caputo (Economy) were among the panel participants, the influencer ‘Gordo Dan’ Parisini was among the orators and there were some famous surnames from abroad such as Lara Trump (the United States president-elect’s daughter-in-law) and Eduardo Bolsonaro (son of the former Brazilian president), as well as Spanish Vox leader Santiago Abascal. Milei will be ending the next two weeks abroad, attending the Mercosur summit in Uruguay yesterday and flying to Italy the following Friday to attend a rally of Fratelli d’Italia (the party of Italian premier Giorgia Meloni). For his part Caputo had just returned from Sao Paulo where he had been plugging investment in Argentina together with presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei.
NOT SO EXTRAORDINARY SESSIONS
The government has called for extraordinary sessions of Congress until December 27 to debate six bills featuring political and electoral reform (including the elimination of PASO primaries) but not the 2025 Budget, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni announced on Thursday. Instead the 2023 Budget looks set to be rolled over for the second year running. The previous day Congress Speaker Martín Menem was re-elected.
CRISTINA WANTS NEW CONSTITUTION
Ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last week called for constitutional reform with “a system of amendments like in the United States.” This reform should include limiting elections to every four years with no midterms, she said, plus an overhaul of the court system, which can be declared constitutional or unconstitutional and where judges are elected by popular vote. Vice-President Victoria Villarruel was unimpressed, saying on Monday that Cristina Kirchner’s place was in jail. On Thursday the Supreme Court called for the ex-president to stand trial for the 2013 memorandum of understanding with Iran, overruling a 2021 acquittal.
NARCOVIDEO TARGETS PATO
Last weekend Security Minister Patricia Bullrich denounced being the recipient of a video from a narco-terrorist organisation containing death threats with Santa Fe Radical Governor Maximiliano Pullaro also a target, suggesting that this could be a response to having reduced homicides in the city of Rosario by 80 percent. While doubts about the video’s authenticity were expressed in some quarters, the Santa Fe Province Security Ministry announced the next day that controls would be tightened.
EX-MINISTER DIES
Former Infrastructure Minister Guillermo Ferraro died last Wednesday at the age of 69. Even though he lasted barely six weeks into the Javier Milei administration, he also belonged to the half of the Cabinet whose appointment had been confirmed even before Milei took office. His downfall was reportedly the result of running afoul of Cabinet Chief Nicolás Posse (himself subsequently another ministerial casualty) over an alleged Cabinet meeting leak but it is also true that Milei’s intense austerity drive left his portfolio (transport, housing, communications and public works) with very little work, being immediately absorbed into the Economy Ministry upon his dismissal. Ferraro spent most of his career in the business world as director of KPMG Argentina (auditors and tax advisors) and his sporadic cooperation with the political sector was with both Peronist and Cambiemos politicians.
PESO APPRECIATION
According to Bank for International Settlements (BIS) data, the Argentine peso is the most revalued currency in the world, appreciating 40.1 percent in real terms in the first 10 months of his year, way ahead of second-placed Turkey at 16.5 percent. Analysing these data last Tuesday, GMA Capital concluded that the real multilateral exchange rate was very close to the levels of late 2001, the period of the convertibility crash. But this exchange rate also made this the best summer for holidays abroad (especially in Brazil) in the last six years.
THE FORTUNATE FIVE
The country’s 50 richest persons have a total fortune of US$78 billion of whom the five richest have US$28.2 billion, Forbes magazine revealed on Tuesday. The latter quintet consists of Marcos Galperin of Mercado Libre (US$8.5 billion), pharmaceutical lab tycoon Hugo Sigman (US$6.3 billion), oilman Alejandro Bulgheroni (US$5.1 billion), conglomerate heir Luis Perez Companc (US$4.2 billion) and Techint’s Paolo Rocca (US$4.1 billion).
CIVIL SERVICE EXAMS
As from next week over 40,000 temporary and contracted state employees will be subjected to compulsory examination to weed out the inept. Every employee will be allowed three attempts before striking out. The examinations with 20 to 24 multiple choice questions will be run by the Deregulation & State Transformation Ministry headed by Federico Sturzenegger. Dismissals in the public sector through to July had already totalled 30,936 jobs, according to the INDEC national statistics bureau.
LOAN CASE GOES TO TRIAL
Corrientes judge Cristina Penzo last Wednesday ordered the seven indicted suspects in the case of Loan Peña (a four-year-old missing for almost six months) to be placed on trial and remanded in custody (with one of them granted house arrest). The file dossier already covers almost 1,100 pages.
JORGE MACRI HAS HIS SAY
Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri had his 15 minutes of fame last Monday, confirming that ex-deputy and Coalición Cívica leader Elisa Carrió still had 15 City Police bodyguards at taxpayers’ expense (recently criticised by President Javier Milei), for which he blamed his recently remarried predecessor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and also announcing that as of this week subway fares may be paid with debit or credit cards or mobile telephones among other options with the fare remaining 757 pesos.
FORMOSA TRUSTEESHIP URGED
Libertarian senator Francisco Paoltroni (who left the La Libertad Avanza caucus earlier this year due to his objections to the Supreme Court nomination of federal judge Ariel Lijo) last Tuesday presented a bill to place his province of Formosa under federal trusteeship, arguing that there is "no other institutional way" to remove seven-term Peronist governor Gildo Insfrán, whom he accuses of unconstitutional practices.
MILEI MAY STAY MUM
The Anti-Corruption Office headed by Alejandro Melik last Monday rejected the request of the Coalición Cívica requiring President Javier Milei to reveal the clients who previously contracted him as an economist for consultancy services or lectures, where he earned up to US$25,000, but also urged him not to favour them (with their names unrevealed, so exclusively up to him).
INSAURRALDE PASSES BUCK TO EX-WIFE
Former Lomas de Zamora mayor Martín Insaurralde is justifying the inordinately lavish lifestyle for a public official placing him on trial for embezzlement by attributing it to his previous marriage with the model Jesica Cirio. During 20 months between 2021 and 2023 alone, Insaurralde spent over US$78,000 just on air tickets in his frequent travels abroad, which included the notorious yachting trip in Marbella with the model Sofía Clerici in September, 2023 landing him in trouble. In that same period, he earned 13 million pesos or US$34,000 working as Buenos Aires Province Cabinet chief. La Plata federal judge Ernesto Kreplak is heading the trial.
MALVINAS WAR DEAD HONOURED
After a five-year hiatus, 140 relatives of the 1982 South Atlantic war dead were able to render them tribute at their graves in Darwin cemetery on the Malvinas islands last Wednesday thanks to the Foreign Ministry, the Asociación de Familiares de Caídos en Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur and Corporación América running Argentine airports. That cemetery houses the remains of 238 of the 649 Argentine combatants who died in that conflict, of whom 121 have been identified.
DELPO RETIRES ON HIGH
Injury-stricken tennis ace Juan Martín del Potro retired last Sunday on a triumphant note by beating the Serb Novak Djokovic, the player with the most Grand Slams and weeks ranked first, 6-4 y 7-5 in an exhibition match in Parque Roca stadium (or was he allowed to win?). Del Potro won 22 titles (including the 2009 US Open against Roger Federer) and two Olympic medals in the course of his career.
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