When on March 25, 2020 he passed away Bartholomew Luis Miterthen director of the newspaper The nation, it seemed that the times of this family at the head of the middle centenary were over. However, after an intricate legal battle, the heirs were not only able to recover the shares that corresponded to them, but also times of change within the company are predicted. And there is even the real possibility of one of them becoming part of the board again and asking for an audit of the situation of the multimedia The Nation. The authorities of the newspaper did not respond to inquiries from NOTICIAS.
After the death of the patriarch, none of the successors knew exactly how much the fortune of the historic president of the group was or all the assets he had to distribute. Nor was it known what would happen to the shares of the middle centenary. Two years later the landscape changed.
Esmeralda, the fourth of Bartholomew’s five children, He embarked on a legal dispute to claim the assets that he was entitled to inherit. She managed, according to those close to her, that 25% of the shares of The Nation that Bartolomé owned (along with his sister Kinucha) have returned to being controlled by the family. This recomposed, in part, the relationship between all the heirs that had passed through very turbulent waters after the Emerald complaints. The mitres, then, regained power over KMB SA, the company that owns that 25% of shares. At the head of said firm was Esmeralda, who in this way can not only participate in shareholder meetings and have her own office in the newspaper, but also could even run as head of the board.
“When I started this I only wanted what was mine, what was being taken from me. The newspaper is a magical, incredible place. Something happened to me, a certain infatuation, a vocation. I feel like it, I know it’s difficult, it’s a new world and I’m going to enter little by little, with certain criteria. This is a beginning, I plan to go for much more”, he said Esmeralda herself to Jorge Fontevecchia on Radio Perfil, making it clear that his presence in La Nación will not go unnoticed.
In December of last year, when the Justice had not yet ratified the ruling that returned control of the shares to the Miter family, Esmeralda had already announced what her first measure would be: “An audit to find out everything that is being done outside of the law in La Nación,” he said. And now, that situation is close to becoming a reality. From the legal representation of the actress they assure that a check on all internal movements, both economic and institutional, will be the first action they carry out.
CHAIRWOMAN. Like the litigation to prove all of Bartolomé’s assets, the dispute to recover the share capital was also sinuous. “In 1996, when the Saguiers obtained the majority shareholding, (Bartolomé) Miter and his sister Kinucha set up a company with the 25% of the shares of La Nación that they still had and then they presented themselves jointly at the shareholders’ meetings. . Hence the name: KMB SA by Kinucha Miter Bartolomé”, Santiago Yofre, Esmeralda’s lawyer, explained to NEWS.
Precisely KMB SA became the company of discord, since the heirs had to resort to legal instances to determine that, in effect, the firm continued to belong to Bartolomé at the time of his death and that therefore it should now pass to his heirs.
“Like many businessmen, instead of appearing he (Bartolomé Mitre) and Kinucha as owners of KMB, they set up corporate structures. At some point foreign companies, in other trusts. The entire corporate structure had been put together by Miter’s former lawyer, Mariano Gagliardo, but Miter was always the president and he was the one in charge,” Yofre acknowledged and explained why a dispute over the ownership of the firm then arose: “When Miter dies, Gagliardo begins to maintain that Miter was not the owner, but that they were the cardboard companies, with which it was a two-year fight to show that all that structure was false, irregular, and that the true owner was Bartolomé with Kinucha”.
This dispute reached the General Inspection of Justice (IGJ) who agreed with the heirs in February of this year. On April 6 this materialized. An assembly was held between the judicially declared owners of KMB SA and the figure of “Emerald President” emerged there.
In addition to IGJ personnel, Esmeralda’s lawyers participated in the meeting; Julio Vergara, lawyer for María Elena del Rosario Miter (Kinucha) and also Mariano Gagliardo and his lawyer Fernando Carregal. Alfredo Hernán Henning Medina also appeared, presenting himself as attorney-in-fact for Federico Spínola, a presumed shareholder of KMB SA, although the IGJ staff invited him to leave the meeting (see box).
In the assembly, Esmeralda was elected new president of KMB SA with no abstentions or votes against, thus becoming the head of this key firm for the future of La Nación. “It’s something new, I’m very moved. I haven’t started that life yet, but everything is happening in a very strange and strange way,” Esmeralda herself commented and acknowledged about her relatives’ decision that she be the one in charge: “I did the road, the one who was I’m soaked in the subject, they don’t know how to do it and I think it’s very judicious of them to put themselves in their place. My aunt thinks that I have more energy to be in the presidency.”
Now, with Esmeralda officially declared as the owner of the firm that holds a quarter of the share capital of La Nación, the road continues. “We have to get hold of the books and accounting documentation to audit the status of KMB and also present ourselves to the newspaper La Nación to find out how things are there and start exercising shareholder rights,” said Yofre. According to her lawyer, the share capital that Esmeralda has gives her that right, “She has enough power to promote it. We want to see what situation it is in, how it was financed in recent years and how the rest of the partners acquired the shares,” detailed Yofre, who acknowledged that they are still at the beginning of this process.”The road from ‘tete a tete’ with the newspaper has just begun, we are still making the documentation to then go and introduce ourselves.”Consulted by NOTICIAS, from La Nación preferred not to respond to Esmeralda.
FISSURE. The audit proposed by Miter has a clear objective and is to verify an assertion that she has been making for some months now. According to what she said, former president Mauricio Macri would have paid off part of a debt from La Nación in exchange for a favorable editorial line: “Macri has a lot to worry about. He would have paid 15 million dollars of the debt that the Saguiers had and have, ”he stated, although he did not provide evidence and explained that although he could not take anything for granted due to possible legal problems, if he said things it was because he knew them. The hypotheses did not end there: “My guess is that Macri could be a shareholder but with another name, that’s what I think. They are theories that I have been thinking.
Mitre’s main suspicions point to the meteoric rise of La Nación +, the cable channel that broke into the dispute that C5N and TN had been holding for years. In fact, not only is it successful in prime time, but it has also added great figures to its screen in the last two years. “I think it’s strange that a channel has the best journalists in the country, in quotes, in there, when there wasn’t even enough to eat. I would wonder what was going on. At the very least someone put money interested in politics”, accused Esmeralda.
Miter had already shown his disgust with Cambiemos and publicly criticized Mauricio Macri, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and María Eugenia Vidal several times. He even placed himself at the opposite end of these leaders, assuring that he would even have been interested in doing politics within the Frente de Todos.
His lawyer expressed himself in the same line: “The audit also looks for that. Esmeralda wants to see how this channel began to be financed, who put it together. The debts of the Saguiers, with whom the newspaper took debt or if that conditioned the editorial line”.
Another factor would be added with the presence of Esmeralda. It is that according to herself she said, she asked “The Nation, especially, to respect the President and the Vice President. I have no relationship with either of them. It seems to me that she should be criticized, but not that cheap ridicule. It is very vulgar how they refer to the first leaders: on the channel they are very vulgar.
Thus, although Esmeralda has not yet made use of her right to have an office inside the La Nación building, she is already beginning to outline her official entry into the medium. She wants to and as a result of all this, she says that “a vocation” arose for her. According to her lawyer, “in the multimedia they are going to receive her with concern.”
Her presence may spark an internal dispute over control of the middle centenarian, but she says she’s only doing it to get back what’s hers. and her family For now, she already thinks and plans her next moves.
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