Martín Insaurralde understood the seriousness of the matter as soon as the photos of his trip to Marbella were published. Still, he tried one last political move. He spoke on the phone with Sergio Massa and with Axel Kicillof to beg them not to let go of his hand. “In a week it happens,” he suggested to them. “I’ll fix it,” she insisted. Nobody paid attention to him. Both candidates publicly asked that he resign as Chief of Staff of the Buenos Aires government and the possibility of being a councilor in his native Lomas de Zamora. And the leader had to comply.
Since the beginning of the scandal, Insaurralde took refuge in his mansion in the country Fincas de San Vicente, the one that Jésica Cirio took care to show in her Instagram stories where she gave fitness advice. The house that she bought a decade ago and that she enlarged until it became a “the most ostentatious in the neighborhood”, As the neighbors know it, it showed a standard of living that was already difficult to explain.
Today everything makes more sense, although even Former officials who worked for many years at his side were shocked to learn of the fortune he amassed: “I am greatly surprised, like most of us who ever worked with him. Nobody imagined that level of money,” one of them tells NOTICIAS. The same source inquired about the state of mind of Kicillof’s former chief of staff and the response was forceful: “It’s knock out,” they replied.
Sofía Clerici’s publications left no room for error. On Saturday the 30th, the media uploaded a dozen stories about a luxury trip to Marbella, which was crowned with fOthers on a yacht where Martín Insaurralde was seen. Minutes later he deleted them, but the bomb had already exploded.
Insaurralde had traveled alone, on September 15, to the European destination, and there he had met the woman. Hours later, they were already aboard the sumptuous yacht Bandido, on which the former official allowed himself to be photographed. The rental of the boat exceeds 8 thousand euros per day, according to the Marbella Boat Charter page. On land, there were also exorbitant expenses: more than 40 thousand euros were paid for jewelry and handbags. AND They stayed at Villa Cascabel at the Marbella Club, a 550 square meter mansion that its owners describe as “a hidden gem among olive trees and bougainvillea.” “It’s a perfect whim,” they conclude.
By the 30th, when Clerici decided to make the photos public, Insaurralde was already being pursued by another scandal: eJournalist Carlos Pagni had revealed that the divorce with Cirio, with whom he shared a decade of life, had cost him 20 million dollars that he had put in an account in Uruguay. Following this information, the alarm bells rang: the Central Bank of the neighboring country began an ex officio investigation.
To make matters worse, his 2022 affidavit (the last one he presented) leaves little room for expenses: Insaurralde claimed to have no euros or dollars saved. Just 600 thousand pesos deposited in the bank, a house and shares. The only income he reported was as mayor (a position in which he has a license and from which he has not yet resigned) and chief of staff. For this reason, there was a flood of complaints against him.
The deputy Graciela Ocaña requested that the Lomese’s assets be seized and that he be investigated for illicit enrichment. The same thing that María Eugenia Talerico, Ricardo López Murphy and José Luis Espert demand in different complaints. The media lawyer Gastón Marano sued him for evasion and included Clerici, whom he considered an accessory. The case fell to federal judge Federico Villena, but prosecutor Sergio Mola asked that he be removed due to an alleged friendship between the magistrate and the former Buenos Aires chief of staff.
“Some are looking for cover. This not. There is no way he can try to justify his standard of living.”, one of the sources investigating it is surprised. The thing is that Insaurralde only registers work activity in the public sphere and does not seem to be able to justify its level of expenses.
There are only a couple of companies associated with his name, but he does not declare profits from them. He is vice president of Trianon SA, led by businessman Gregorio Tchinnosian, and has shares in Sasaxa Libero SA, which was created in 2009 as an advertising agency and changed its corporate purpose in 2012 to Gastronomy. There, the then mayor of Lomas created, together with a relative, a restaurant that he called Andiamo, on the picturesque Colombres street. Right in front of the apartment where the man who gave him his great political opportunity lives: Jorge Rossi, former mayor of Lomas, accused of being Eduardo Duhalde’s right-hand man in the gambling business. Everything he inherited.
He took the figures he hired to give shows in his municipality to Andiamo to dinner. “He was always very cool. “He loves rubbing shoulders with celebrities,” says a neighbor. who remembers seeing Alejandro Fantino, Verónica Varano and even international artists like Joaquín Sabina and Joan Manuel Serrat there.
“This money is not from the Municipality. If he were from here, 30 percent of the budget should have been stolen,” they say in Lomas de Zamora. The break, they point out, would begin later, with the development of its influences in the Province. That was the springboard for the dizzying growth of his assets.
The Fortune.
While he was mayor of Lomas, Insaurralde showed himself as a simple leader. He did not arrive at the Municipality in luxury cars, nor did he wear expensive suits. But outside his party he began to show another standard of living: in 2014, in an interview he gave to NOTICIAS with Cirio, he assured that he had moved to Puerto Madero “because of the insecurity.”
Puerto Madero was the turning point. Visits to Marcelo Tinelli’s television studio and the Buenos Aires jet set transformed the man from Conurbano. “Not only did he leave Lomas, but he suddenly stopped coming,” says Guillermo Viñuales now.who was his Chief of Staff and today is a candidate for Together for Change and rival of his dolphin, Federico Otermín.
His former subordinates describe Insaurralde as a harsh boss. “The insults he yelled at Otermín were outrageous,” they say, and they complete: “Martín is quite cyclothymic.” Otermín was so clear about what he wanted that he put up with the verbal violence: He had met Insaurralde as a journalist for the Zonales supplement of the Clarín newspaper and had jumped from the other side of the counter, as his spokesperson.. He rose to the presidency of Deputies and the possibility of being his successor.
Little by little, Insaurralde began to consolidate its leadership among the mayors, becoming an articulator with the provincial government. He negotiated laws and distributed works from the office he rented in Arroyo and Suipacha. Other businesses would have been handled in the apartment next door: it was rented by one of his key men in the gaming sector, the member of the Court of Accounts, Juan Pablo Peredo.
The final landing in the Province would come some time later. In 2021, he agreed with Máximo Kirchner to intervene in the Kicillof government. There, in addition, he wove an important network of power that could now fall apart. He had the head of the Cabinet, the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, the presidency of the Lottery Institute (with Omar Galdurralde) and a strong presence in the Court of Accounts, among other positions.
Insaurralde’s relationship with gambling players was crowned with a resolution in which the Province awarded the online betting service to large business groups. Justice will move forward in investigating these ties.
Another sector that is being watched closely is public works. ANDn Lomas warn about the ServiLum firm, a company that grew exponentially in its management, dedicated to the installation of public lighting and traffic lights, but that branched out to other activities and different districts of the Conurbano.
While he tries to assimilate the blows, in politics there is a large majority who believe that he has reached a point of no return. “The video in which they take down their candidacy poster proves it: they did it in broad daylight, with all the people there,” says an operator. And he concludes, regarding the photos of the scandal: “Peronism can forgive you anything, unless you are an idiot.”
Origin.
In an old campaign spot, Insaurralde described himself as a middle-class man: “I come from a family of values, of respect. My parents are teachers, two workers. They always told me that in politics I had more to lose than to win,” he described.
His father, “Pichín”, a fan of the Banfield club, is no longer alive. But His mother is still domiciled in the same house as always. She never moved away. Her two sisters, Adriana and Alejandra, work in the Municipality of Lomas with positions of undersecretary and director, respectively. Nothing fancy. They, neighbors say, are still a middle-class family. Politics drastically changed the economic situation of Insaurralde.
The former official hardly retains his childhood friends: some, who worked with him, were even fired after a fit of anger. “Martín is only crazy about women and having money. “He is very competitive,” a leader describes him. who has known him for a long time.
He had relationships with several girls from the show. After her separation from Cirio and the scandal with Clerici, Many remembered a fleeting courtship he had decades ago with actress Dana Fleyser.
His first marriage marked a large part of his political career. He married Liana Toledo, daughter of the former mayor of Lomas, Hugo Toledo. The then president Carlos Menem was invited to that party. With her he had her children Martín and Rodrigo. Later, she would become entangled in a true love scandal, although without public significance: He would marry his former sister-in-law and godmother of one of his children, Carolina Álvarez, with whom he would have Bautista.
In the middle of the scandal involving Insaurralde, one of the boys assured his mother that he is not having a good time: “Thank you for the effort you are making to accompany me. Please help me stay isolated from everything,” he wrote to her via WhatsApp in a chat accessed by NEWS. Sadness and anger also invaded the family.
Insaurralde’s third marriage was with Cirio. The wedding celebration, held in 2014, shows the influences that the then mayor had garnered in the world of gaming. Daniel Angelici, Rubén Mautone, Federico Achával and Guillermo Gabella, among others, appeared among the tables.
The fall from grace of the former Buenos Aires Chief of Staff was experienced as a catastrophe for the players in the game. His teacher, Jorge Rossi, had revolutionized the sector: “He transformed the game into the only tax that people pay with a smile,” comments one of the protagonists of the field with some admiration. Insaurralde had been a skillful continuator of those negotiations. Now they were left without a significant interlocutor.
During an event, in 2017, Cristina Kirchner presented him as a “model” of an official. “I always say one thing: there are no public men and private men, there are men. When you have a good private life you can have a good public life too,” he said. The video with those statements went viral again after the scandal.
Overwhelmed by criticism, Insaurralde asks those around him not to follow the news in the media. Through Telegram, he insists that the storm will pass. But he also knows that his political future will be difficult to overcome. Now comes the time to fight the court battle. And he has everything to lose.
