Investigation announced in Argentina over Macri-era IMF bailout

[sandensea]

Argentine President Alberto Fernández announced a federal probe into a record, $56 billion credit line entered into by his right-wing predecessor, Mauricio Macri, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2018.

Addressing a Joint Session of Congress on Monday, Fernández announced “a criminal complaint aimed at determining the authors and participants in the greatest fraudulent administration and embezzlement of public funds in memory.”

“To indebt the country in this way - only to enable the most astounding capital flight in our history, and behind the back of this Congress - cannot be seen in any other way,” he affirmed.

The bailout was sought by then-President Mauricio Macri after a carry-trade debt bubble known locally as the “financial bicycle” collapsed in April 2018.

Agreed to on June 8, 2018, $44 billion was ultimately borrowed from the “high access stand-by” facility by July 2019.

Most of the IMF loan was lost to speculative capital flight however - part of an estimated $86 billion lost to offshoring out of $104 billion in net new public foreign debt during Macri's 2015-19 term.

“Article VI of the IMF states that no member may use the Fund's general resources to face capital flight,” Fernández pointed out as an opposition candidate in 2019.

He accused the IMF of “financing Macri's campaign by indebting Argentina.”

The bailout was reportedly backed by then-President Donald Trump, who shares both a political affinity and longstanding friendship with Macri, 62.

Both were later defeated for re-election.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.pagina12.com.ar/326880-el-banco-central-dio-el-primer-paso-para-abrir-la-querella-c

Former IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and then-Argentine President Mauricio Macri smile during an Atlantic Council dinner in New York in 2018.

The $56 billion credit line granted by Lagarde to Macri was the largest in the Fund's history and made up 61% of its loan portfolio at the time - leading Argentine critics to refer to the IMF as the “International Macri Fund.”

The practice of taking on foreign debt to finance capital flight - similar to the debt crisis that bankrupted Argentina during its last dictatorship in the early 1980s - has now prompted a federal probe.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Here's hoping not one of Macri's co-conspirators, collegues in crime will be allowed anywhere near

this investigation, none of his judges, prosecutors, etc.

This couldn't be more important.

Will be hoping so hard justice will triumph, at long last.

Thank god they are pursuing this now.

Hope they have all the borders watched constantly, every airplane, bus, taxi, ship, even guys with covered wheelbarrows until after the investigation is concluded! Also very tall men wearing long overcoats.



(Such a tremendous photo of Christine LaGarde and Mauricio Macri! Who can tell which one is more attractive?)

[sandensea]

2. At that dinner, he predicted "the whole country will end up crushing on Christine!"

In his famously broken English, of course.

(I mention that because Macri always prided himself on his "fluency" in English - which is nonsense)

In all seriousness, it's tragic how the cycle of taking on foreign debt to finance offshoring by the elites - what derailed Argentina (probably permanently) back in 1980/81 - ended up repeating itself almost to a tee in 2018/19.

"Always stumbling on the same rock," as they say in Argentina.

I do hope they can get somewhere with this probe - finding facts and naming names, as it were.

But with so much of Argentina's judiciary dominated by Opus Dei types (many of them Menem-era holdovers), it won't be easy.

The courts in Argentina are protective of banking interests to the point of coddling.

Just ask former Vice President Amado Boudou, who was brazenly railroaded as revenge for breaking up the private pension fund scams in 2008 - saving the country untold billions but angering banks and the stock market crowd (who routinely used pension funds to dump unwanted stock).

Boudou was convicted of the vague charge of "incompatible dealings" in 2018 solely on testimony obtained from someone Macri bribed with at least $100,000 to do so (official documents proved this - but the courts won't touch it).

Not content with that, they're now trying to deny him his right to serve out his sentence in house arrest (he had already served 18 months in 'pre-trial detention' - a favorite tactic in Argentina). And in the middle of this pandemic.

So I wouldn't put too much faith in Argentina's notoriously politicized judiciary (which is what McConnell was trying impose in the U.S.). But we'll see.

Thanks as always, Judi.

[Judi Lynn]

3. So much went wrong starting with the military dictatorship, good grief. So much darkness descended.

When the fascists got total control of the country they warped all parts of the government it appears, and it's taking forever for honest progressive politicians like Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Alberto Fernández over time to pull the country out of the ditch before the fascists manipulate another one of their colleagues into the presidency, and wreck things all over again.

There would be nothing left at all of the country had Macri been able to win a second term. What Macri did to Amado Boudou proves his confederates carry nasty grudges and are willing to wait until they find an easy way to strike in order to harm their enemies. That was vicious.



The men with him don't seem convinced he is actually a criminal, in my view. So sad. Hope a change in personnel will allow a new look at what happened and he will be exonerated.