Daniela Mori, a cumbia singer, was the first partner that Javier Milei had in his entire life. At that time, in 2018, the libertarian was approaching 48 years old, but until then he had never experienced a courtship.
The former founder of “Las Primas” has good memories of her time with the economist, but when asked, she has several comments to make about it that attract attention. First, the long months it took her to discover her boyfriend’s apartment in Abasto: Milei told her that Conan did not accept guests, ignoring the small detail that the dog had died the previous year. The atmosphere of dirt that reigned in the house was also evident to him, a product of the five small puppies, genetic copies of the paterfamilias, who lived crowded in that place. The singer spent entire afternoons scrubbing the floor and collecting animal waste.
However, there is an anecdote that remains in the retina. That’s what happened on Saturday nights. It was a time when Milei, who was already kicking television sets and was beginning her meteoric path to fame and power, liked to spend watching movies. His then partner gladly accepted the plan, but time and time again he ran into the same obstacle: the third guest. Karina Milei, distrustful of her older brother’s first bond, joined religiously on Saturdays, and with a peculiarity: she watched the movies from the same bed as the lovebirds. Six months later, thanks to her sister’s push, Milei cut the singer off.
Since then, several things have happened, starting with the fact that the brothers came to power and even triumphed in the midterm elections. But the bottom line remains the same: Karina Milei even controls what happens at her brother’s bedside, which gives her monopoly power over the President and the Government. This absence of limits, the inability of the eldest in the family or anyone else to stop her, her need to always be the protagonist, and her greed for material things lead her time and again to be at the center of all the scandals of the ruling party. If there is a sin in this government, Karina is behind it. And it is becoming increasingly clear that there is more than one bad apple.
Issues. An important member of La Libertad Avanza, from its founding line, checks that what he is about to say remains strictly off the record. “The consequences of Karina managing everything are beginning to be felt,” she says in a whisper that expresses that, although the figure of the general secretary is beaten, she continues to generate panic in the ruling party.
The thing is that all the big scandals that the Government is going through and has gone through can be traced back to the general secretary. The Andis case, the Spagnuolo audios and the long hand of “Lule” Menem, the Libra crypto scam and Manuel Adorni’s flights. All roads lead to Karina, and this is just to mention the cases that transcended the red circle and reached public debate. There are several more that this magazine has been reporting and that perhaps at some point will become a topic of national interest: the sale of candidatures, the paid meetings with the brother, the return of a tithe in the local delegations of Anses and Pami, and the lack of transparency in the family accounts, just to name a few.
The fronts could be divided into two. The hottest one involves what Diego Spagnuolo called “genetic voracity”: Karina Milei’s ability to appear again and again in the middle of a corruption scandal. The agreement between Mauricio Novelli and the Milei in the Libra case speaks of a payment of US$ 5 million. The trader’s audios explicitly mention a monthly payment of US$2,000, when the libertarian was a representative, and US$4,000 when he came to power. The candidacies, according to what libertarians throughout the country denounced, ranged from US$20,000 to US$50,000 each. The meetings were priced from US$3,000 to US$10,000, although some guests at the Tech Forum, the event that Novelli organized and which was attended by the President, declared that the number was “six figures.” Spagnuolo assures in his audios that Karina took from US$500,000 to US$800,000 per month, just for the supposed overpricing in the purchase of medications. The list could go on but the end is always the same: what would seem to be something similar to Karina’s addiction to money.
The other front, to which all evils can be traced, is the political one. Or, rather, the selection of personnel. Here Karina presents a radical difference with her brother: while he got rid of each of his close officials in complex moments -Francos, Posse, Spagnuolo and Marra, to name just a few-, the youngest of the family does the opposite. He supported “Lule” Menem in Andis’ worst moment, his point guard Sebastián Pareja after the Buenos Aires defeat – despite the fact that the President himself tried to kick him out until he ran into his sister’s refusal – and now Adorni. This tenacity – “they are not going to bend my hand” was the first reaction of the general secretary when they came to ask her for the head of the Chief of Staff – has already proven to be a problem: on the one hand it does not enable the replacement of figures like fuses, and on the other it seems more than a coincidence that everything that moves around her are opaque leaders with a propensity to be caught in improper acts. “Karina only surrounds herself with people who are totally submissive to her and who have no expectation of her own flight,” says a leader who fought against her and lost.
In any case, it would be unfair not to mention that the Secretary General is not the only one who manages to cause damage to the Government. Milei himself is a necessary participant, in addition to what officials from other orbits do. There is also the big underlying issue: the economy, which, between inflation that has not decreased for nine months, the increase in unemployment and the drop in consumption, remains in a dramatic state. The Government Confidence Index, produced by the Torcuato Di Tella University and followed with great interest by the entire red circle, registered the fourth consecutive month of decline in March, reaching what is the lowest figure so far in this mandate.
In any case, Karina – who in most of the surveys has a negative image of 60 or 70% – manages to stand out among all the open fronts. It has some logic: Karina’s and her family’s troubles, whether due to corruption scandals or trips on private flights to Punta del Este, strike at the heart of the Government’s story. “Milei raises a discussion in moral terms: good versus evil, good Argentines against caste. If the economy continues like this, the only thing you have left to offer, facing next year’s elections, is that story. And these facts hit home,” says a consultant who today works for the ruling party. The man adds one more fact: the negative image of the President has never been higher. The pollster Delfos placed it at 62%, Haime at 67%, CB Consultora at 55.6%, and Tendencias at 55%, just to name a few.
Maze. It seems almost ironic, but in this government that in many ways was born in a television studio, much of what happens is explained by the cameras. That is a field, that of official transmissions, that the sister’s side manages. The absence, for the second consecutive year, of any image of Santiago Caputo or his people at the opening of the sessions in Congress was a brutal warning – the only ones that the sister knows how to give – that the internal power in the ruling party was being radically twisted in favor of Karina. Days later the Ministry of Justice joined its control orbit.
On Wednesday the 18th something similar happened again. Milei was giving a speech at the Libertad Palace when he stopped to congratulate, in a mystical key, his star advisor. “The work of the Lord has changed. Before he sent us manna, now he allows us to have geniuses like Santi Caputo.” Immediately the transmission went to the front row, where Karina was seen, with a bad face, along with Adorni, “Toto” Caputo and Mario Lugones, who began to applaud. As soon as the officials realized the seriousness of the general secretary, they quickly put away their palms, almost like a group of kids that a teacher finds making a mess in the classroom. It was striking that even the Minister of Health, father of Rodrigo Lugones, Santiago Caputo’s historical partner, played along with Karina.
There is another paradox locked behind the scene. The thing is that while all the scandals are mounted on Karina’s back, she does not stop accumulating power. Perhaps it is not a coincidence at all: the decision to make a prominent member of the judicial caste like Juan Bautista Mahiques a minister signals that the general secretary, with the causes warming her ears, begins to think about the day after power.
The next areas he has in his sights are SIDE and ARCA. The Secretariat of Intelligence, as this media reported, has not yet been colonized simply due to a lack of human resources: it offered the position on two occasions to Jorge Anzorreguy, the lawyer who is the nephew of Hugo, former boss of the Menemist spies, but he rejected an invitation that could turn out to be a time bomb in this government. Andrés Vázquez, at the head of the collection agency, is putting into practice that old maxim that in politics you only accompany yourself to the door of the cemetery: despite the fact that his team is Caputo’s, he has been building bridges with Karinism. Some in the Government, maliciously, wonder if the summer transfer market is still open. Sergio Neiffert, who left SIDE at the end of last year, could advise him with his own experience: towards the end of his mandate he tried to change sides but was unsuccessful and had to leave his position.
Karina has already given proof that she does not take hostages. He has already gotten rid of Nicolás Posse and Guillermo Francos, two actors who had their own backs, and now he aspires to do the same with Caputo, or at the very least reduce him to the category of simple strategist. The sister goes in search of total control of the Government.
The final shot. On the one hand there is one certainty: Javier Milei could not have been President without the drive and support of his sister. She was the only person who contained him and loved him – some could say that she did it in her own particular way – throughout his entire life. She was there when no one else was there, even taking care of details that any average adult usually resolves on their own: she took him to iron his suits, managed his schedule, the money, gave him food and much more. Going one step further, one could assure that it is not that Milei could not rule without her sister: she could not live a day without her.
But that coin has two sides. Karina, the backbone on which the brother’s success was built, is on the way to also becoming his worst nightmare. More than one of her enemies assures that she will be directly responsible for his end. “And not only politically, but also personally, it is going to ruin his life,” says a man who treated them a lot, in reference to a possible judicial outcome. Perhaps Karina, like Eve in the Bible, is the one who will end up making her brother’s future turn into a nightmare.
You may also be interested
