The government resigned to cut communication with Diego Spagnuolo in the last hours of Wednesday 20. At that time, the scandal that had unleashed the filtration of audios where he denounced a system of corruption in the area of disability that splashed Karina Milei was already a national news. The last attempts of the Executive’s dome were in vain: in messages that justice will find in the telephone of the former lawyer of the president different popes of the ruling party intimidated him to accept the guilt of the situation, to present everything as the error of a feverish imagination, to ask for forgiveness for affecting the reputation of the officials to whom he would have been meaningless already to give his renunciation.
For those hours Spagnuolo was exactly the same as the state in which he was when this edition closed: in shockbut with some short moments of lucidity, abductions of consciousness where he tries to activate everything he learned after receiving at the UBA Law Faculty. It is that “hell” that he is living, as he tells the few he continues to speak, did not start a week ago, although that was when he began to burn. For a year he has been thinking how to give an end to his experience in the public function, without implying ending in jail. That time that was his great fear, although he now became worse. Much worse.
Today, held at his home in Pilar, with his brother’s only company, a criminal lawyer, directly fears for his life. However, aware that any movement that makes will have a judicial impact in the immediate future, refused to accept what they asked for the ruling party. He did not want to present his resignation and the government ended up expelling himthe beginning of a defensive policy that was going to end with Javier Milei himself accusing him of “liar.”
A week later, Spagnuolo kept thinking the same thing: that he has nothing to hide and that the culprits are others. To the tumbos he found himself in the middle of his worst nightmare.
Genesis
Where does this story start? If I had to specify a moment well it could be on Sunday, November 4, 2018. That day Spagnuolo, then a virulent tweet who earned a living working as a labor lawyer, opened the doors of his department in Bartolomé Miter and Medrano. More precisely, the sum of the building. In that quincho, the first “Espert Fest” was held. That was the first meeting of liberals and tweeters, among which were the now first candidate of the ruling party in Buenos Aires; Communication Director Juan Pablo Carreira; Lucas Luna, Another young man from Santiago Caputo and economists such as Miguel Boggiano, Ivan Carrino and Fausto Spotorno. Many met in that choripaneada, where Spagnulo showed himself to this world for the first time. However, with Espert, he already dragged a great link since before, to the point that Spagnuolo lent him his home to celebrate a party. Milei, on the other hand, that day did not want to go: at that time he had a bad relationship with the Economist Calvo.
By the time the libertarian came to the presidency some things had changed. Spagnuolo had moved away from sorrysay those who know that world, because the economist began to have certain jealousy for the close relationship that the lawyer had built with his wife. Those who have treated the national deputy characterize him as someone with certain insecurities in that plane. To the one who had approached Spagnuolo, on the other hand, he was the future president.
Although they had met first on Twitter, they had a relationship during the 2020-2021 campaign, months in which Espert and Milei campaigned together under the fiction that they were great friends. The lawyer, in fact, advised Ad honorem to Milei in the trials he made in 2021 to different journalists, who had related him to Nazism. By the time I arrived at the Rivadavia armchair, Spagnuolo went to the only one who the president personally took care of asking him for a place in the state. Although he had no experience in the area, he became the head of the National Disability Agency (Andis). And here the other story began, which today has the national government in check.
Crisis
Those who treated Spagnuolo define him as a low profile manand something lonely. He lives with his two cats, he has no stable partner or children. His mother was in his native Blanca Bay. Is that why he will have worked so much with Milei? Two men with a limited social life who ended up making friends? There is something that is clear: it has 38 income to the fifth of Olivos according to the latest available data, which leaves it in the fourth place of the ranking of visits to the president. The relationship is very close.
In fact it was in one of those visits where he warned Milei what was happening in his area. There he told him that “Lule” Menem and his sister, Karina Milei, were staying a return of up to 800 thousand dollars per month thanks to overprices in the hiring of the Argentine Swiss drugstore. Before he had told Sandra Pettovello, with whom he had a good link. These last two statements come from the audios that journalists Mauro Federico and Ivy Cángaro revealed. According to those who maintain dialogue with Spagnuolo, he had exposed the same to other Popes de Lla, for example, Victoria Villarruel. Near the vice president confirm this version. On the other hand, in the environment of the Minister of Human Capital they deny having been aware. Will the conversation with Milei real? Does the president now say that his once friend is a liar, will he be lying?
There are some indications that indicate that the fear of Spagnuolo to go imprisoned, and the need I felt to tell everything, there was a long time. One is the interview with Fantino, July 2024, where the entertaining implies that he knew about the lawyer’s string with “Lule” Menem. Milei’s favorite animator then confirmed it in the streaming Carnival: he said that his friend and partner of Neura, Andrés Rodríguez -who knew Spagnuolo of the law -told him before he started the note to ask the lawyer for the Menem. The other indication is the confirmation of the surroundings of Villarruel, although it should not be ruled out that this statement is pushed by the internal itself. Finally, a source from the liberal world, which had a brief step in this government and maintains proximity to the former head of Andis, also told this medium the existence of this type of comments.
There is a story to support the spagagnuolo thesis: Augusto Grinner, an influencer who was one of the founders of Lla, published Chats with Milei from the end of 2022 where he warned him that he who wanted to introduce him were asking for money in the name of Karina. In that conversation, the libertarian replied that they were only “chusmeríos.” Is the economist unable to see any mistake in his sister?
Scandal
Those who treat Spagnuolo put a date at the beginning of their worst nightmares: August 2024. At that time the journalist Tomás Méndez revealed in his program, on Channel 9, the same corruption system in the Andis That, a year later, Spagnuolo would count on the audios. On 27 of that month a lawyer, named Alejandro Díaz Pascual of the Civil Association “Social Arch”, would transform journalistic revelation into a judicial complaint for “fraudulent administration, businesses incompatible with the exercise of public functions, bribery and influence peddling.” In May of this year justice dismissed that complaint.
This cause today has a key place. The first is the speculation that are woven around it since the civil association does not even have a website or a social network. The lawyer Gregorio Dalbón, who after the appearance of the audios filed the complaint that led to Judge Sebastián Casanello to issue the first measures as raids to the residences of Spagnulo and the Kovalivker familyowner of the Argentine Swiss drugstore, tried in vain to contact Díaz Pascual or some other member of that NGO. He never found an answer. In fact, the only visible activities that “Social Arch” has are complaints to Luis Caputo and Sandra Pettovello.
Not only that: Prosecutor Carlos Rívolo filed the cause without even calling Tomás Méndez As a witness, on whose work the entire complaint was based. Some in the red circle are convinced that behind this cause was the same spagnuolo, or someone from his circle. According to this thesis, he would have promoted this complaint as a maneuver to protect his back from the possibility that the issue at some point exploded. It is that, even if he had wanted, the then official could not have denounced before justice what he had in the audios to be charged in the cause of “social arch” for that same crime.
In that line there are those who imagine that at least part of the filtered audios – which shows the sound in different places and circumstances – could have been recorded by the same spagagnuolus. For now they are only versions. There are at least two certain things: one is that Spagnuolo will use, as a defense argument, the fact that he had already been denounced and that that prevented him from denouncing; The other is that it was on that date on which Spagnuolo began to tell his fears to whom he wanted to hear him, including the moment where the recordings happened.
Now, held in Pilar, the former Andis official tries to maintain strict silencewaiting for new audios to be filtered or that a formal imputation by justice arrives. In fact, you are not even following the news or social networks, as a way of isolation from the scandal. For now lives in a world of paronia. They fear they are spying on it. He also fears for his life because he speculates that the worst of the scenarios would conform to both the government and the opposition: some for what would eventually leave to count before justice, and others because only the scandal would grow.
Spagnuolo was surprised that the only ones who tried to contact him, on behalf of the ruling party, were lawyer Santiago Viola and Jorge Anzorreguythe former leader’s son the Menemist Side. I expected some more political contact, someone who, to put it in Creole, could negotiate with him some kind of peaceful exit. The presence of these lawyers – the second, contacted by this magazine, denies this version – disturbed it.
The former head of the Andis expects, at the close of this edition, that justice advances on it. They already seized his cell phone and managed to open it. There would have been detected erased messages. Everyone who knew him does not imagine that he is a man prepared to spend a long season in jail. “He is just a labor lawyer,” they say to define it. That is, today, one of his problems: unlike other political scandals that happened in Argentine history, Spagnuolo is someone who came to politics without previous experience or a nourished contact agenda in the red circle.
Nor, in the course of this government, it was embedded behind either of the two sides of the internal. “Diego’s problem is that he has no network. He is totally alone,” says one of his friends. However, this man alone, a lawyer of the pile, today has the national government against the strings. And everything would seem to indicate that this novel is just beginning.
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