Former President Macri denounces political persecution due to failed judicial summons in campaign

With just over two weeks remaining for Argentina to hold legislative elections, former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) denounced that he is the victim of political persecution when he went to testify, for the first time after leaving power, accused of ordering illegal espionage during his mandate, in a hearing that ended up being suspended due to an error by the court.

“Here I am in (the city of) Dolores trying to understand this untimely summons, without grounds, in the middle of an electoral campaign, but we are here because we have always stood up”Said the politician before the courts of that town, 220 kilometers from Buenos Aires, when addressing supporters who gathered to support him.

The investigation, led by federal judge Martín Bava, dates back to September 2020, when the Federal Intelligence Agency, already with the Peronist Alberto Fernández as president, denounced that the previous government carried out illegal espionage on relatives of the 44 crew members of the submarine ARA San Juan de la Armada, found sunk in 2018 after a year missing.

That complaint also affected, among others, the former head of Intelligence Gustavo Arribas and his deputy, Silvia Majdalani, who, unlike the former president, have already been prosecuted.

For a justice “Independent”

Macri, who is an opponent of Fernández -who beat him in the 2019 elections-, was blunt before entering the court: “If they believe that these two years of aggression, disqualification, slander and persecution, almost a permanent obsession with me, are going to diminish my commitment to you, to defend your values, they are very wrong ”.

And he advocated for a Justice “independent and impartial” and “not to live as today with a culture of dark power, so perverse that it uses a tragedy to harm ”.

“A tragedy that affected all Argentines, because we have all been and continue to be in solidarity with the relatives of the ARA San Juan”, Stressed the ex-president on stage with several political colleagues.

Finally, the hearing was suspended and postponed without a date due to “a court error”, Explained the lawyer Pablo Lanusse, since -as he related-, with the session already started, an official warned that the former president had not been relieved of the obligation to keep State secret, which the judge should have requested from Fernández.

This situation occurs in the middle of the campaign for the legislative elections of November 14, in which Macri does not run for any office but his coalition arrives with an advantage after being the most voted in the September primaries.

The accusation

Bava decided on October 1 to call Macri to testify, and before this Thursday two other summons were frustrated: on October 7, when the former president was not in the country, and on October 20, due to Macri’s decision not to go and challenge the judge.

“The Government believes that all citizens are equal before the law and therefore have an obligation to appear before the law”, Said the spokeswoman for the Executive, Gabriela Cerruti, hours before Macri’s appearance.

In any case, this is his first judicial appearance since he left power, after losing in 2019 the elections to Alberto Fernández and the former head of state and now vice president, Cristina Fernández, who has dragged multiple accusations of corruption for years and also on countless occasions she has declared herself being persecuted.

But this is not the first time that Macri has been singled out for similar crimes. In December 2015, days after assuming the Presidency, he was dismissed in a case in which he was prosecuted for alleged illegal wiretapping, uncovered in 2009, when he was mayor of Buenos Aires.

Now he is accused of having “ordered and enabled the systematic performance of intelligence tasks ” illegal, what “They sought to influence the political and institutional situation of the country”, Punctually regarding the claims made by the relatives for the sinking of the submarine, as well as knowing their data and those of their surroundings, and their activities.

“That they spied on us, it is proven, that it was illegal, it is very proven, we still do not know who all those responsible and the motivations have been. Hopefully they say so, but it certainly has to be linked to the sinking”, Said this Thursday Luis Tagliapietra, father of one of the victims and plaintiff.

After a year of unsuccessful searches – which included help from various countries – the ARA San Juan was found, in November 2018, in an operation by the US company Ocean Infinity, although its remains and the corpses of its crew were not refloated.

Almost three years later, the judicial investigation continues to find out what happened to him and to detect if there were irregularities in his disappearance and search.