Argentine campaign finance scandal: Macri ally blows whistle on massive laundering during 2015 race

[sandensea]

A brewing campaign finance scandal involving Argentina's ruling party took a new twist yesterday when a former candidate for local office revealed that during the 2015 election "100% of the party's contributions were fake."

The statement was made by Osvaldo Marasco, then candidate for mayor of the Buenos Aires suburb of Ituzaingó for the "Let's Change" coalition led by current Argentine President Mauricio Macri.

Marasco corroborated research by the online news daily Diagonales that Macri's 2015 campaign used personal data of thousands of residents from 81 Buenos Aires Province cities to launder about 40 million pesos ($4.2 million at the time) in "private contributions."

He explained that the slush fund was managed by the president's cousin, Jorge Macri, as well as María Eugenia Vidal (who was elected governor of Buenos Aires Province that year) and other top Macri associates.

"They invented 'fundraising dinners' that never took place," Marasco said, "These were filled with names previously submitted to the electoral board to which donations of up to 50,000 pesos were then attributed."

Jorge Macri, mayor of the upscale Buenos Aires suburb of Vicente López, was, according to Marasco, "always behind all this."

The scheme, he said, was run out of Al Río, an office and residential complex built in Vicente López between 2012 and 2016. "There they have a bunker, a parallel city hall, and even an office for (Governor) Vidal," Marasco said, adding that these were financed with bribes extracted from the builder, Ribera Developments.

"They kept the top floors in one of the buildings; that's where everything is handled."

Cash is king

Marasco's revelations come three weeks after Juan Amorín of the progressive daily El Destape found 476 public aid recipients falsely listed as "contributors" by Macri's 2017 mid-term campaign.

The case, which has since expanded to over 800 corroborated cases, triggered a federal investigation on June 19.

Records show that 90% of their 2017 campaign contributions were in cash, compared to just 3% for the main opposition, the center-left United Citizens.

Macri has faced numerous campaign finance probes since the 2015 election, which he narrowly won.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diagonales.com%2Fcontenido%2Faportes-truchos--ex-pro-cont-cmo-financi-cambiemos-la-campaa-2015-y-quines-manejaron-el-dinero%2F10089&edit-text=

Macri's four laundreteers: Deputy Buenos Aires Mayor Diego Santilli; Buenos Aires Province Governor María Eugenia Vidal; Vicente López Mayor (and presidential cousin) Jorge Macri; and 2015 campaign manager Federico Salvai.