The coimas of the cousin of the president | A consultant …

The cousin of President Mauricio Macri, Angelo Calcaterra, was again in the eye of the cyclone. Manuel Vázquez, the former adviser to Ricardo Jaime at the Ministry of Transport, said that he was repentant and said that Calcaterra, at the time owner of Iecsa, bribes paid to millionaires when calling for tenders to access the works, as had confessed the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Before the prosecutor Franco Picardi last Tuesday, Vázquez was accused of collaboration and admitted to being an intermediary. He charged Jaime for a management that he did so that the IECSA company, Calcaterra, stays with the works of Sarmiento. He said that between 2003 and 2009, the then Transportation Secretary had asked for $ 5 million to begin the talks, then an additional $ 15 million for Iecsa to prepare the file. call for tenders. In addition, Vázquez recalled that it was Iecsa – through Calcaterra – who was responsible for forming and organizing the business consortium and for establishing contacts with the previous government to maintain the contract. The company, which still belonged at the time to the Macri group, would have summoned both Odebrecht, as well as Ghella and Comsa, the rest of the international partners, as the repentant explained. His collaboration agreement with Picardi has not yet been approved by Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi.

Last August, the president's cousin had ignored, through a technical brief that he had presented to Martínez de Giorgi, the bribes that Odebrecht claimed to have paid in our country. for various works, including the burial of Sarmiento, and at the same time, he denied receiving an address for Iecsa to be presented. In making an investigative statement, Calcaterra baderted that "Sarmiento's landfill job was not illegal." There were irregularities, it was about Administrative failures, no crimes. "" If Odebrecht did, it's by his own means, "he added. Unlike the defendants in the case, because of the photocopies of the notebooks that prevent answering questions, he was released from the federal courts of Comodoro Py. After Vázquez's declaration, the employer's circle came to deny the accusations and described them in "the election campaign for the presidential elections of October".

The complaint at the origin of the case was filed in 2016 by Graciela Ocaña. According to the judicial resolution signed in April 2018, the deputy of Cambiemos reportedly said that she had been informed of a report by the police of the Federative Republic of Brazil in the context of the "Operation Lava Jato" case, in which is mentioned among others, Spain's Controls and Special Audits SL (CYAES) and Argentina SA's Control and Special Audits (CAESA), such as those allegedly used to receive bribe payments from the group Odebrecht, through the account of the offshore company "Klienfeld Service Ltd". In this context, Odebrecht signed several contracts in Argentina, including the agreement concerning the burial of the railway Sarmiento, signed with the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services, as a member of the Consortium Nuevo Sarmiento (CNS-UTE) formed with the companies Iecsa, Ghella Societa Per Azioni and Comsa.

In recent months, the prosecutor Picardi has implemented various experimental measures that have led the AFIP to identify that the consortium led by Iecsa and Odebrecht had distorted their balance sheet to escape 4.5 million dollars via Andorra . With this money, they would have paid the bribes to the officials. Justice, moreover, intervened with the administration of the consortium which is currently carrying out the work.

According to reports, there is a correlation between the Vázquez statement and the documents already in the case, including those including the confession of Odebrecht leader Luiz Antonio Mameri, who admitted paying $ 2.9 million. bribes to Argentine officials. The Brazilian added that Iecsa was the company responsible for managing, during the first stage, the payment of bribes for the Sarmiento project.