Information cannot be silenced: 40 journalists sign open letter against Macri for press reprisals
A group of 40 well-known journalists in Argentina and elsewhere have signed an open letter denouncing the administration of President Mauricio Macri for "retaliation" and "pressures to silence voices."
The letter refers specifically to alleged threats made against the center-left Buenos Aires news daily Página/12, and its senior investigative journalist, Horacio Verbitsky, for information published on August 27 detailing over $132 million in "whitewashed" offshore accounts owned by at least close associates of the president - including his brother, Gianfranco Macri.
Those involved took advantage of a tax amnesty law, passed by Congress at Macri's urging in July 2016, which drops all tax evasion charges or potential charges in exchange for a 10% payment. The law was amended by decree that November - in violation of Argentine constitutional law - to allow family and close associates of the administration to take advantage of the offer.
The ensuing scandal - as well as six cases against Macri that range from influence trafficking to money laundering - has become a headache for his center-right "Let's Change" coalition heading into legislative elections this Sunday.
The open letter, titled 'Information cannot be silenced', also comes weeks after news anchor Roberto Navarro, to whose top-rated evening news program Verbitsky was a frequent contributor, was fired on September 19 amid what executives later admitted was pressure from the government to force his removal.
Some 38 Argentine signatories were joined by French journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupéry and Robert Cox, a British journalist who edited the recently defunct Buenos Aires Herald from 1959 until his reporting on massive human rights abuses in the 1970s forced him to leave Argentina in 1979.
The open letter reads as follows:
In recent weeks various media have reported on the decision of the national government to carry out retaliatory actions for the information published by the journalist Horacio Verbitsky in Página/12 regarding money laundering carried out by associates and relatives of President Mauricio Macri.
This information, citing sources, was not denied.
As journalists, we note our deep concern at the attack on freedom of expression that a decision of this kind would imply. We believe that there should be no retaliation for disseminating information and that every democratic system must guarantee plurality.
We are convinced that the pressures to silence voices produce irreparable damage to our democratic life.
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