Wiretap on former Argentine President Cristina Kirchner leaked in "homegrown Watergate"

[tenorly]

Argentine President Mauricio Macri has come under fire for allegedly ordering the leak of a private telephone conversation held last July between former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) Director during her last two years in office, Oscar Parrilli.

The July 11 recording, leaked to the press yesterday, was part of a three-month long wiretap and included a line that prompted a new criminal complaint against Mrs. Kirchner for “abuse of authority” by Guillermo Marijuán, a prosecutor allied with the right-wing Macri administration.

Marijuán's charges stem from a vaguely-worded conversation about former counterintelligence boss Antonio “Jaime” Stiusso, in which Mrs. Kirchner asks Parrilli to “start gathering information on all the cases we put together against him. I mean, not put together but accused him of.”

Stiusso, who was dismissed by former President Kirchner in December 2014 as part of an agency-wide overhaul, has been linked to contraband pharmaceuticals and most notably to the mysterious, January 18, 2015, death of Alberto Nisman, chief prosecutor in the case of the 1994 AMIA Jewish mutual society bombing - which killed 85 and according to victim's rights groups has never been properly investigated.

It was Stiusso who, shortly after being dismissed, persuaded Nisman to dismiss his 10-man security detail days before his death by a gunshot to the head.

Mafia-like message

Parrilli accused Macri, current AFI Director Gustavo Arribas, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lorenzetti of “illegal political espionage against the ex-President.” The leak, he added, was “a thinly veiled, mafia-like message to the opposition.”

The leak of the 7 month-old conversation comes days after Arribas was found to have collected $600,000 in Swiss bank account payouts from an Odebrect account found by Brazilian prosecutors to be solely used for distributing bribes.

Mrs. Kirchner's lawyer, Carlos Beraldi, pledged legal action, describing the leak as “a ploy with criminal characteristics and a clear infringement of Article 53 of the Criminal Code, which outlines specific circumstances in which a person’s voice or image can be reproduced without their consent.”

Homegrown Watergate

The wiretap was authorized in June by Judge Ariel Lijo as part of a separate investigation into Parrilli for the alleged cover-up of information that later led to the arrest of a fugitive, Ibar Pérez Corradi. The case stemmed from allegations made by right-wing Congresswoman Elisa Carrió during the 2015 campaign regarding purported links to Pérez Corradi, chief suspect in the murder of three amphetamine dealers in 2008.

The Pérez Corradi case backfired in November when he testified instead that a pro-Macri judge, Sandra Arroyo Salgado, had engaged in extortion, and that a key Macri ally, Senator Ernesto Sanz, had received $200,000 in payouts to derail a case involving the recreational ephedrine trade (which peaked in Argentina in 2009, and declined after import restrictions for its raw materials were enacted).

Parrilli described the phone surveillance as evidence of the “real Macri,” and made reference to the fact that Macri had already been indicted in 2009 for illegally wiretapping his ex-brother in law, sister, competitors of his father's (a top public contractor), as well as AMIA bombing survivors who were critical of both the official story and of Nisman's handling of the case in particular.

The AFI, under Macri, was caught in October spying on numerous critical journalists and even on allies such as Congresswoman Carrió.

“This scandalous political espionage against former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, without doubt the principal political leader of the opposition, is being carried out under the express orders of President Macri. And it clearly reveals that all of the opposition of being spied on.”

“We are,” he concluded, “experiencing a kind of homegrown Watergate.”

At: http://www.thebubble.com/parrilli-and-cfk-both-claim-to-be-victims-of-scandalous-political-espionage/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Macri needs to be held accountable for this, and owes the country his explanation.

This is such a huge story, I need to re-read it. It's overwhelmingly nasty.

Once again, Cristina is very far from the culpable one in this pathetic travesty.

My god, Macri is trying every rotten scheme in the book. Let's hope he gets what's really coming to him.

[tenorly]

2. Unfortunately, he controls the S. Court and most judiciary - to say nothing of Intelligence & Police

It's the kind of power Trump is doing everything he can to get for himself.

Judges in Argentina mostly either belong to the far-right Opus Dei, or (like Macri) are allied to it. These are the same judges who, despite lacking evidence, approve investigations against Mrs. Kirchner or anyone who worked with her; but have systematically cleared Macri or his allies from charge after charge - even with irrefutable proof.

This is precisely what happened to Macri cases such as the illegal wiretaps, the dollar futures profiteering, the 2014 Iron Mountain fire cover-up, tax evasion and fraud charges, and of course the Panama Papers scandal.

All of these cases have mountains of documentation to back them up; but there's never any "there" there as far as his "napkin judges" are concerned.

50 cases in all just since Macri took office a year ago, more than all the cases presented to the courts during the "corrupt," 12-year Kirchner era - and to be fair some were cases of real wrongdoing, for which they've all had to face justice (very much unlike the Macri mafia).

Thanks, btw, for posting the update on the Arribas case. Arriba, arriba Judi!