Key Macri ally, denounced for holding political prisoners, embroiled in bid rigging scandal
Gerardo Morales, the governor of Argentina's remote Jujuy Province and a close ally of President Mauricio Macri, has come under fire over a bid-rigging scandal involving the provincial tourism ministry.
E-mails revealed yesterday by the progressive news site El Destape detail a scheme by which the Minister of Tourism and Culture of Jujuy, Federico Posadas, diverted close to 5 million pesos ($245,000) to a political communication consultancy firm through rigged bids and in some cases phantom contracts.
The e-mails, dated as recently as March 8, include detailed instructions as to how to skirt public contract bidding laws - including confidential data on competitors' bids.
The firm, Reale-Dalla Torre (RDT), received massive publicity contracts in 2014 and 2015 from Macri as mayor of Buenos Aires - of which 9 million pesos ($1 million at the time) remains unaccounted for.
RDT's owners contributed over $35,000 to Macri's 2015 presidential campaign - a violation of Argentine campaign finance law. The case against them for fraudulent contracts, filed in September 2015, remains stalled in the courts.
Double standards
The scandal highlights a pattern by the right-wing Macri administration and its allies of using courts to pursue only political opponents, leading to accusations that Mr. Macri is using the judicial system to neutralize the opposition.
One of the most emblematic such cases is in Morales' Jujuy Province, where indigenous rights activist Milagro Sala has been imprisoned for 27 months - first without charges, and then on charges of embezzlement but without evidence.
Critics note that prosecutors have offered no proof substantiating the charges, relying only on hearsay from individuals including an illiterate man who was later awarded a public contract and an ex-convict who was released despite serving a sentence for murder.
Citing lack of evidence and serious irregularities such as the use of bribed witnesses, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in October 2016, that Sala's detention is in fact arbitrary, and urged Macri and Morales to release her immediately. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) did likewise in December.
At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eldestapeweb.com%2Flos-correos-que-comprometen-morales-las-licitaciones-truchas-jujuy-n42322
Governor Gerardo Morales: Not a fan of e-mails.
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which consists of the hard earned taxes extorted from the poor, and yet the law arrests and imprisons the poor before they have even the opportunity to commit crimes? The law could used some gross tuning. Governor Gerardo Morales, a man with low friends in high places.
Leap, Presidente, dance, Gobernador! Frolic with the little people who adore you. Or maybe NOT!
How lovely seeing a visit from The Big Deal from Buenos Aires with the little local tyrant, who lives to
implement the fascist plan for control and suppression of every living human being in his feudal realm.
Milagro Sala, imprisoned, yet, without legitimate charges and trial.
She holds the image of one even less beloved by the fascists, who
was kidnapped in broad daylight, tortured, murdered, then thrown
out on the ground much later, at a time politically useful to the regime.
The people will win, regardless. Those who abuse them will not. It's written in all the holy books, and it's there within our hearts, bones, tissues. We all know it.
