Jose Torello he wanted to kiss Cristina Kirchner and she stepped forward and held out her hand. She was doing trompita. It was the first awkward moment of a meeting that was intended to be secretbut it transcended due to the relevance of the characters.
It was Monday July 11 at 11 in the morning. The vice president received Senator Torello in her office and invited him to sit at the long table that he has for important meetings. He wanted to accommodate her to one side of her, but CFK sent it to the other end, arguing “social distance”. “A custom left over from the pandemic,” he excused himself. Torrello accepted.
The meeting it was hand in hand and without interlocutors. The original request for the meeting had come at the request of the former chief adviser to Mauricio Macri, that today he is a senator due to the resignation of Esteban Bullrich from his seat. Torello was the first alternate senator in that 2017 election in which Bullrich beat Fernández de Kirchner.
The vice president had not responded to Torello’s request until the magical hand of Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, who usually meets with Cristina to chat about politics. Torello, who also speaks with Rodríguez Saá, had told him that CFK had “nailed the check”, so the San Luis decided to show off his good offices and convinced the vice president to have a coffee to meet him.
That’s how it came call of Mariano Cabral, one of the most important attendees Cristina Kirchner, to coordinate a meeting. Torello asked for a few hours to respond, because he needed to “ask permission” from Mauricio Macri. The former president recommended that he not go, but Torello was in an awkward situation because the contact had been initiated by him. Now that she had agreed, he couldn’t refuse the meeting.
While he made other calls to listen to other opinions, the hours passed and Cristina’s office rushed him. It was Friday, July 8, and the agenda for Monday had to be closed. Torello decided to ignore his political boss and went to the meeting. On Monday, one of the first comments made by the vice president had to do with these twists and turns.
Cristina Kirchner: It took her a long time to respond.
José Torello: I just had to ask…
Kirchner: Yes, I imagine, Macri.
Torello: And yes.
Kirchner: It’s fine.
If there is something that Cristina Kirchner understands, it is verticalism. José Torello came to politics pushed by his friend Mauriciowhom he has known since childhood, because they both went to school Cardinal Newman. Torello is a year younger than Macri and is her other “brother for life”, in addition to “Nicky” Caputo. He began studying Law at the Catholic University (UCA), but finished it at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and after graduating he went to work at the Llerena y Asociados law firm together with his other friend, Fabián “Pepín”, today exiled in Uruguay. Rodriguez Simon.
Torello inherited from his father a field in Bragado, province of Buenos Aires, which today he uses animals and soybeans. He worked in an insurance company and later founded his own. He diversified into the real estate business and in recent years he has also added a company that imports golf clubs.
At the age of 38, he had generated a good amount of business that allowed him to “retire”. That is to say: not being in a job that requires you to meet hours. She devoted herself to reading and spending time with his children. It was 1998 and Argentina was reaching the end of the Menemist cycle.
In 2003 he joined Macri’s project as proxy of the PRO and accompanied him until they became president in 2015. His most remembered anecdote of the inauguration was on December 10 at 00:01, when they appeared at the door of the Casa Rosada with Pepin Rodriguez Simon to know the place. In the Plaza de Mayo they were dismantling the stage that Kirchnerism had set up for Cristina’s farewell ceremony, and there were hardly any people in the Government House.
And much less a change of command protocol. Torello and “Pepín” took advantage of this confusion to seize the situation. A security guard gave these two strangers a tour who left after a few hours. They could not believe that he had entered the Casa Rosada just by saying that they were the new tenants.
Torello was head of advisers during the four years of the Macrista government and integrated the so-called “judicial table”, indicated by Cristina as the main powerhouse from which the judicial persecution against the Kirchnerists was planned.
“I had never heard of a democratic government being formed by a court table composed of the Minister of Justice, German Garavano; by (Pablo) Clusellas, Legal and Technical Secretary; by a certain Torello who is also part of the ruling cast; by Angelici, president of Boca. I have nothing against Boca, I’m from Gymnastics, “said CFK on the day of his investigation in the Vialidad trial.
In those days I didn’t know who Torello was, who always He defended himself by saying that he was in a judicial table in which only the specifications of candidates to occupy courts were analyzed.
After the 2019 electoral defeat, he returned home and resumed his businesses with the idea of never returning to public office. the disease of Stephen Bullrich it forced him to put the suit back on. He found out about the situation through a call from Macri. In sl 2023 he will leave the civil service and his intention is to work from the shadows helping his friend. Participate in meetings, discuss politics, bring parties closer, unblock conflicts, build bridges. He already started in the Senate.
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