When Víctor Manzanares began working with the Kirchner couple, he met a couple with more political ambitions than financial resources. He was the rich one, who came from a family with plenty of assets. They didn’t have much, but Néstor had just become mayor of Río Gallegos and dreamed big.
Manzanares saw up close, and helped increase, the assets that the couple was incorporating through politics, until receiving bags of bribes for between two and three million dollars per week that came from Buenos Aires to place in different investments.
He was the first to fall into disgrace with the Los Sauces cause, in 2017. He was arrested and felt betrayed. Cristina Kirchner sent him a message: “From now on you manage with your family’s money. I am an old retiree and seized.” He knew he was alone and that’s why, the following year, he decided to speak out.
Through the repentant testimony of the accountant Manzanares and the investigation that the prosecutor Carlos Stornelli was able to carry out, which brought more than 20 officials and 65 businessmen to the dock in an oral trial that will mark a milestone in Justice, dozens of unusual stories of black money were known. Pornographic scenes of millions of dollars stolen from the State during Kirchnerism.
The investor. The statement as an accused collaborator of Manzanares was valuable for the case in that the accountant provided data that, until then, had escaped the file: names of companies and assets that were in other countries appeared.
Manzanares knew this because he had been in charge of negotiating these agreements with international companies. “The bags arrived in Río Gallegos on the presidential plane and ended up at Néstor’s parents’ house,” reconstructs his lawyer, Roberto Herrera, according to the statements of his client. “A couple of those bags, estimated between two and three million dollars, were taken to ‘Polo’ (as they call Manzanares) to invest. Like this, every week.”
Among the companies that were included in the file, the name of San-Up appeared, a company with French capital, leader in the market for nebulizers and health care instruments. Manzanares negotiated it at the request of Muñoz and on behalf of a front man, Carlos Cortez, and they ended up acquiring it for 34 million dollars: three times the market appraisal value. In a decade, commercial justice would end up declaring bankruptcy. Like those, several.
The accountant’s area of influence was Patagonia. He did not usually travel to the Federal Capital and knew the stories of silver from what Daniel Muñoz, former secretary of Néstor and Cristina, told him, who ended the K era with properties in New York and Miami and companies in other parts of the world.
He rarely accompanied the Kirchners to Buenos Aires. One of the most remembered was in 2009, when Néstor asked him to go settle his first case of illicit enrichment with Judge Norberto Oyarbide. The accountant joined the magistrate and made him close the target. The file was closed in record time.
Advantageous. Prosecutor Stornelli was able to advance further with the investigation. And he found the story of more crazy scenes, such as the “Mexicaning” between colleagues of the investigated illicit association.
The money had to end up all in the same place: the Kirchner couple’s apartment on Juncal and Uruguay or the Quinta de Olivos. But along the way there were those who were tempted by the loot. “They robbed each other,” said the prosecutor.
According to their investigation, they even had smaller bags made, so that 10 thousand dollars of each one would be missing without the bosses realizing the detail. “The thing is that they counted in bulk. The volume was such that it was impossible to count the bills with the machine,” said Stornelli.
The stories of “Mexicaneos” included Oscar Centeno, the driver and author of the notebooks that began this investigation. On one trip, the driver of the vehicle encouraged Roberto Baratta, Julio De Vido’s right-hand man: “Remember the poor a little, we pout too,” he begged him. The official had a gesture that aroused a lot of anger. He gave her a bag, but empty. The scenes include home invasions and even murders that remained under a blanket of suspicion, such as that of Secretary Fabián Gutiérrez. “There were several robberies in the homes of different secretaries,” said Stornelli. And he added: “They dug wells in the patio and broke walls.” The treasure was so great that the search was incessant.
The oral trial for the Cuadernos case now helps to revive incredible stories of the millions of dollars embezzled from the State during Kirchnerism. The robberies of the robberies. Corruption at its finest.
