Prosecutor asks University of Buenos Aires experts to audit Macri's financial disclosure filings. [View all]

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Argentine federal prosecutor Federico Delgado has requested an investigation into President Mauricio Macri’s sworn financial disclosure filings issued before the Anti-Corruption Office and the Buenos Aires municipal government between 2013 and 2015. Macri, who was mayor of Buenos Aires at the time, was gearing up for a presidential campaign which he narrowly won last November.

It is a felony in Argentina for a public servant to file a false financial disclosure statement.

Delgado's motion, filed before Judge Sebastián Casanello, would have experts at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) conduct the audit. The prosecutor’s request follows the Panama Papers and Open Corporates leaks in April that revealed Macri’s name in at least two offshore companies and his connection, through immediate family members, with up to ten others.

Gianfranco, one of Mauricio Macri’s brothers, owns eight shell companies in Panama. According to economist Ezequiel Orlando, who has done research on the Macris’ links to offshore companies, five out of the other seven companies in which Gianfranco Macri is a board member were established in December 12, 2007, only two days after Mauricio Macri became the mayor of Buenos Aires.

When the Panama Papers scandal broke out on April 3, Macri said he was not "legally obliged" to declare his connection with the offshore companies listed as clients of the disgraced Panamanian corporate law firm Mossack Fonseca as he "never had a stake in them."

The revelations forced the president, however, to admit he was a director of a shell company based in the Bahamas (Fleg Trading Ltd.) and another based in Panama (Kagemusha SA) - both created by his father, a major government contractor, to control still-active investments in Brazil and elsewhere without the knowledge of Argentine revenue authorities.

Macri has come under fire for failing to disclose, and after the Panama Papers scandal failing to explain, his connection with these offshore companies, given that such firms are often used to launder money and evade taxes.

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/215784/prosecutor-requests-uba-experts-investigate-macris-sworn-declarations