Argentina: will the “Chocolate Scandal” influence the November 19 elections?
The scandals of the Peronist government continue to shake Argentine public opinion with a continuity that is very reminiscent of the judicial vitality of, say, Italy in the 1990s.
The latest scandal concerns a nice package of prepaid credit cards, the Peronist leader Julio “Chocolate” “Chocolate” Rigau, the advisor close to the Peronist presidential candidate Massa, Facundo Albini and his father. These political figures were discovered using a real pack of prepaid credit cards registered to 48 officials of the local administration of Bueno Aires.
Obviously the fact that a powerful political figure from the Justicialist Party, Massa's, has access to credit cards in the names of others immediately suggests corruption. In the end, this system is nothing more than a modern tool, in the era of electronic payments, to circulate untraceable money. Everything was discovered in early October, when a video camera discovered Rigau making withdrawals with cards registered to others.
An arrest order had been issued on October 12 and "Cioccolato" had gone to the prosecutors, but a first judge had blocked the arrest warrants for the 48 official owners of the credit cards, objectively blocking the investigations. The choice had sparked protests and now a second judge, Betina Lacki, has powerfully moved the matter, instead authorizing the arrest of the 48 holders, saving only one who was able to immediately prove his non-involvement in the facts.
The 48 who will now be arrested are not simple public officials, but are often administrators connected, in some way, to the justicialist, Peronist party, currently in government and some are connected to the presidential candidate Sergio Massa, who will clash with the independent candidate Milei the next November 19th. The news of these arrests is on the front page of the main Argentine newspapers and in the news media, so it is reaching the general public. Among other things, it comes after the same Ulio "Cioccolato" Rigau was freed for a certain period following a disputed decision by a judge who had defined his arrest as a violation of privacy, a sentence contested and then overturned.
The third electoral round in Argentina already promised to be fought after Milei had reached an agreement with Mauricio Macrì's liberal party. Now these scandals risk confusing the situation further.
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The article Argentina: will the “Chocolate Scandal” influence the November 19 elections? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/argentina-lo-scandalo-cioccolato-influira-sulle-elezioni-del-19-novembre/ on Wed, 01 Nov 2023 13:00:32 +0000.