Mauricio Macri considers himself a politically persecuted person. The former president of Argentina turned a judicial inquiry into a rally where he accused the Government of mobilizing “dark and evil” forces to put him in prison. Before some 500 followers and almost all the ministers who accompanied him until December 2019, Macri denounced what he considered “two years of aggression, disqualification, slander and persecution.” He thus referred to the investigation he faces for illegal espionage against relatives of the ARA San Juan, the submarine that on November 15, 2017 sank in the Argentine Sea with 44 crew members on board.
This has been the third summons to Macri in the same case. The first did not show up because it was abroad; in the second he tried to challenge the judge, without success; in the third, he organized a square with supporters and the hard core of the politicians who accompany him. The staging tried to replicate the one that Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner mounted in 2016 in front of the federal courts of Buenos Aires. Investigated by a Central Bank dollar purchase operation during her government, Fernández de Kirchner turned her appointment before the judge into a massive act in which she accused the judges of persecuting her and Macri of harassing her in court. Five years later, the image was repeated, but in reverse. The former president had to travel to Dolores, 150 kilometers from Buenos Aires, and there were no crowds; but the message was the same.
It is proven that the Macrismo intelligence services followed up on the relatives of the sailors killed in the sinking of the ARA San Juan. The agents sneaked into the organized demonstrations to demand the clarification of the accident, made files on the wives, parents, brothers and children of the dead and then reported to the presidential security. On one occasion, according to the record, they advanced to the Casa Rosada the content of the demands that the relatives would present to Macri during a scheduled meeting. The espionage files came to light in 2020, after the intervention of the AFI, the intelligence agency, ordered by the recently assumed Alberto Fernández. Macri said at the time that he was unaware that an illegal follow-up had been carried out on the families of the dead sailors.
Judge Martin Bava did not have the same opinion as Macri. He processed him and summoned him to his office, but an inexplicable error prevented him from taking a statement this Thursday. Bava forgot to ask that Macri be relieved of intelligence secrecy, as required by law when it comes to making public information that is considered sensitive or confidential. The exemption corresponds to the president, in this case Fernández, who hastened the process and signed the decree this Thursday, before boarding a flight to Rome to participate in the G20 summit.
The judge’s forgetfulness was proof, for Macri, that the only intention was to summon him shortly before the legislative elections of November 14. “I am in Dolores, trying to understand this untimely summons, in the middle of an electoral campaign. But we are here showing our faces, because we know what we did and our good intentions. We are not the same, we are not afraid of him. On September 12 we told him enough [al Gobierno en las elecciones primarias] and on November 14 we are going to ratify it, “said Macri.
It is not the first time that Macri has been investigated for espionage. In May 2010, when he was head of the Buenos Aires government, a judge prosecuted him for having allegedly led an illicit association made up of policemen from the capital and an army to intercept telephone communications. The victims were his brother-in-law, Néstor Leonardo, and Sergio Burstein, a relative of one of the victims of the attack on the Amia Jewish mutual organization, which occurred in 1984. The case later changed the judge and Macri was dismissed on December 19, 2015, nine days after being sworn in as president.
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Macri’s decision to go to court accompanied by related militants and politicians did not sit well with the relatives of the ARA San Juan, who consider themselves victims of the former president. Luis Tagliapietra, lawyer and father of the crew member Juan Alejandro Tagliapietra, said that the macrista mobilization was “a lack of respect” for the families. “It is their issue, they want to politicize this issue. We never did. This is about our deceased relatives, ”he said. Judge Bava already has the authorization of President Fernández for Macri to violate the secret Intelligence. You must now put a new date to the appointment of the former president.
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