It was a well kept secret until now. The whereabouts of Lázaro Báez, the man identified as the alleged figurehead of the Kirchners and the one who today, together with the vice president, is the protagonist of the electrifying trial for the Road Case, has remained hidden since two years ago they granted him the benefit of house arrest. Nobody knew where he is. And those who did know – a few – preferred to remain silent. But not anymore.
In an investigation that took several weeks, NOTICIAS was able to determine where and how the construction businessman whose rapid enrichment keeps him in the crosshairs of the Justice to Cristina Kirchner. Baez lives in a comfortable house in the municipality of Saint Vincent, in the southern area of Greater Buenos Aires, about 70 kilometers from the Capital. The property is built on a 900 square meter lot surrounded by walls. There is a large park, swimming pool and various outbuildings in addition to the two-storey main house.
The address is not published because the Justice wants to keep it in reserve to avoid escraches like the one that Báez already suffered when he wanted to move to a property that Ayres de Pilar has in the country, in September 2020, and had to give up due to the hostility of the neighbours.
Four sources from his most intimate circle confirmed to NEWS where the entrepreneur lives. One is a family friend and the other three are collaborators who visit him frequently at his shelter. The informants assure that he is anxious about the trial in which the prosecutor Diego Luciani accuses him of having integrated an illicit association with CFK and part of his officials. And that he is still upset with the vice president because, he swears, she never held out a hand to him in his years in prison. Báez is perhaps the person who bothers Cristina the most because behind her fortune, according to the thesis of Justice, that of the Kirchne familyr. Therefore, keeping it off the media radar was essential.
Secret Life. Before moving to San Vicente, Lázaro’s raid included four years of preventive detention, without a final conviction, in the Ezeiza prison. When he got the home, and after the escrache in the Ayres del Pilar country, he asked for help from a collaborator of Mario Ishii, the mayor of José C. Paz, who got him a loaned house in Canning, in the Ezeiza district, not very away from the penitentiary. He was there for almost a year, until he decided to move to where he is now.
Who owns the house of San Vicente? In the records of the Collection Agency of the Province of Buenos Aires (ARBA) it appears as a vacant lot, but sources from his intimate environment assure that it would be owned by Ariel Heine, once a bodyguard of a former mayor of San Vicente, Daniel Di Sabatino . Heine does have in his name, that is, in order, the property that is opposite the one where Lázaro lives, and where Martín Báez, the businessman’s son, stayed for some time, also with a house for the money laundering case that condemned almost the whole family in February 2021. Why is the other property, the one where Lázaro lives, listed as vacant? It could be due to a delay in the ARBA records -the construction looks quite new- and not to the expertise of Heine, who was imprisoned for alleged fraud and usurpation of land.
The first time NOTICIAS visited the place, Heine’s daughter, Ivana, confirmed that both properties belong to her family. And she added that her father and Baez had met in prison. But she did not let go of the whereabouts of Lázaro. That the businessman has now had to resort to the trades of another prisoner, and not his former godmother, speaks of his political solitude.
What is Baez doing in his shelter? Those who visit him almost daily are surprised by his new hobby, TikTok videos. There are also Chinese movies. Classics like “The Red Lantern”, “Live!” and “El camino a casa” are among his favourites. Plus, the treadmill helps you loosen up and stay on track, even if the routine is a bit awkward with the electronic ankle brace that’s with you around the clock. When the sun comes out, he sometimes takes the opportunity to relax outside, mowing the lawn and watering the plants. Of course, the pool is never used, not even in summer.
Báez lives with his girlfriend, Claudia Insaurralde, and her two young children. He was not used to the noise of the boys and had a hard time accepting it in the early days, after spending years alone in a cell three meters by three. But, as the months went by, the sullen and self-absorbed Lázaro learned to enjoy new company. With whom he interacts little he is with the PSA agents, for whom he prepared the garage so that they spend their hours there.
The story of her partner, Claudia, is quite particular. She is 40 years old and is the niece of a former mayor of Río Turbio, in Santa Cruz, who was imprisoned in Ezeiza for the alleged diversion of funds in the construction of a road. Her paths had to cross. While Claudia was visiting her uncle Anastasio Pérez Osuna in prison, she met Lázaro. They have been together since April 2019.
Báez receives some visits such as Mario Ishii and friends from the South, such as businessman Néstor Agullo. His children also go: the girls, Melina and Luciana, see him from time to time, and Leandro, the youngest, stayed to sleep a month ago. The three were sentenced together with his father in the money laundering case for which he was given 12 years, and they were able to remain free because their sentences are minor and release from prison. But the worst part fell to Martín, the eldest son, who received 8 years and, as was said, was a house prisoner right in front of Lázaro’s.
In June 2021, Martín requested permission from the Justice to cross the street and spend Father’s Day with the businessman. But they denied it. For Báez it was a strangest feeling to live a few meters from his son without being able to see him. For a few months, the young man has chosen to serve his sentence in Río Gallegos, in the famous farm of his father where he was accused of having a vault.
Lázaro is intoxicated with the Causa Vialidad in which he shares the poster with CFK. He asked for a computer to study the file in depth, he usually rereads the testimonies of witnesses who incriminate him and participates in the zoom of the trial. “He is obsessed, he became an expert on the subject,” says one of his lawyers, who asks that his name be reserved. Báez’s meetings with his collaborators and other visitors are always in the kitchen, never in the spacious living room. They say that he likes closed and hermetic environments, like his character.
One of the challenges of the businessman is to maintain the privilege of home prison, to which he agreed, after several failed attempts, because he was a patient at risk from Covid. He is 65 years old, has diabetes and high blood pressure, and suffers from arrhythmia. Could he go back to a common jail now that the pandemic is over? The lawyers consulted maintain that it is unlikely. Ricardo Monner Sans, the expert lawyer on corruption issues, explains: “If the theory of the most benign previous norm were applied, the domiciliary would become like an acquired right. I don’t like what I’m saying at all, but unfortunately that’s the way it is.”
The boss. Báez is furious with Cristina. He maintains that he never worried about his judicial fate and that he let go of his hand since he was arrested in April 2016 for the K Money Route cause. CFK’s silence caused even Leandro, the youngest son, to machine-gun her with this phrase: “How did Lázaro get the money? It is not known what the predicate offense is. And she is in that crime.” She is the vice president. And when Oscar Parrilli tried to put cold cloths and argued that Baéz “they condemn him because he is morocho”, the son fired again: “How strange that they come out to talk now.” She was running February 2021 and Lázaro had just given him 12 years for washing.
Now, the investigation of the Road Cause of the prosecutor Diego Luciani verified that Báez and a director of his construction company Austral had telephone contacts with José López, the then Secretary of Public Works, in the last weeks of the CFK government in 2015. There they spoke of orders given by “the lady” to “clean everything”: collect the works owed by the cristinista administration, close the construction company and disappear from the scene. “Only that there is no need to give a sensation of escape,” López warned in those conversations.
Austral, the construction company that in Santa Cruz benefited like no other from the millionaire public works of Kirchnerism, was opened only 12 days before Nestor’s inauguration. And it was necessary to “clean everything” days after Cristina left power. All very explicit.
Despite what these communications suggest, the then outgoing president would not have met with Báez at Quinta de Olivos, and the dismissals in her company, supposedly agreed with her, were carried out anyway. “He didn’t even deign to receive me,” he complains in the privacy of San Vicente.
If Báez has not aimed upwards so far, it is for two reasons. The one who repeats to the most naive: his eternal loyalty to Kirchner, the man who transformed him from a bank employee to a construction tycoon, as well as being his business partner in various low-cost projects. And the underlying reason: already imprisoned and with a good part of the sentence purged, he believes that speaking would only worsen his situation.
Báez reminds his family of the story of the alleged pressures he received from agents of the macrista AFI in 2019, when, in the middle of an ophthalmological control in the prison’s medical room, strangers approached him and told him about recover his freedom and the seized assets if he accused Cristina and said that he is her figurehead. He was silent.
Lázaro has an estate that Justice calculated at 205 million dollars. Most of his assets were seized. Between 2010 and 2013, the investigators determined that he laundered US$55 million with the compulsive purchase of more than 1,400 goods in eight provinces and also abroad. The big question, as his son Leandro raised, is where all that money came from. That is the part that Luciani is investigating today and points against CFK, who from the State made the businessman earn millions.
Internal front. Baez’s ex-wife, Norma Calismonte, also wonders about his fortune. The divorce settlement they reached years ago – the division of 85 properties for 1,600 million pesos – now no longer convinces her, because she believes that there are ventures and profits that were left out of the embargo and that her ex would be hiding from her. For example, some time ago Calismonte sent a document letter to Báez’s current girlfriend, Claudia Insaurralde, because she found out that she was managing a complex of cabins in Santa Cruz. She was also interested in the rentals of two service stations in Río Gallegos, sheds, machinery and parking lots in several provinces, and summer houses like those in Pinamar. Needless to say, her ex-wife is not among those who visit San Vicente.
Lázaro faces his judicial present and these days his lawyers must begin to defend him against Luciani. In these allegations, every sentence, every reference to the K government, every insinuation about a possible complicity between him and the Kirchners will be read with a magnifying glass from those in power.
Baez does not ignore it and uses that firepower to defend himself. He wants to stop being a ghost. Now you know where he is.
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