What is power? This is a question that, from Aristotle to now, the great minds of society asked themselves over and over again. But, despite thousands of attempts, there is still no clear answer. Perhaps there never will be. Or perhaps no one has yet asked Paolo Rocca, the richest man in Argentina, the owner of the threads of the red circle that dribbled the scandal of the notebooks and whose mere mention leaves the Government in the middle today. The owner of Techint has in his hands the most emblematic public work of the last five years, which, several in the Government think -and among them a worried Alberto Fernández-, could be the one that tips the electoral balance if it is released before the half of 2023. It is that on the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline are concentrated, as if it were an Aleph made of iron and with the smell of internal, all the fears and all the anger of a Front of All about to explode. The Roccagate, in addition, killed Matías Kulfas and along with him, several already defeated officials think, the dream of an empowered and independent Albertism also died. It is that, as the Argentine history of the last century could testify, Paolo is everywhere.
At full throttle. Whoever took all this by surprise is Pablo González. Perhaps it was because the head of YPF arrived more than tired at the 100th anniversary of the Argentine company. You have to understand: he literally had to travel back and forth across the country just to see if he could achieve the miracle of bringing together and making two people talk who had spent 90 days without speaking to each other.
González, a month ago, visited Fernández to ask him to attend the event. The President replied that he thought it was more a CFK issue -it was during her presidency that the company was nationalized- and that she should be the one to star in it. That is why González undertook an adventure, and traveled to El Calafate just to see if he could convince the vice president. There the situation began to become a tragicomedy, a postcard repeated in this Government. Cristina told him that she did not want to share the stage with the President, an idea that González conveyed to the target when she returned from Santa Cruz. Alberto, perhaps worried about the institutional vacuum that this emblematic act was going to have, told him that then he would go to occupy the chair. But on Thursday the 2nd, at the last minute, a call surprised the head of YPF. “Pablo, what is Alberto going to do? Is he going to go? Well, then I’m going too, ”he said, from the other end of the phone, CFK. González had achieved what no one had achieved in three months, and that in the middle of the cabinet high priests had tried it, such as ministers Jorge Ferraresi, Gabriel Katopodis and Juan Zabaleta, all on different occasions. But the reunion, which in the previous one was already imagined spicy, had an even more unexpected outcome.
After a short hand in hand between the two, which lasted just over five minutes before going on stage, Cristina spoke before the country and threw several darts. There was one, aimed directly at Rocca and the pipeline bid, which she bounced all over the red circle. “The one who supplies the pipes is a large multinational company of Argentine origin, which must be asked to make the laminated sheet metal they make in Brazil here. Guys: we cannot continue giving you 200 million dollars to pay yourselves in the subsidiary company you have in Brazil. The balance, Alberto, from 2021, tripled that of 2020.” And she also launched one addressed to Kulfas: “You have to sit down with businessmen, but not as friends but asking them to give something back.”
Although those who spoke with the President as soon as the act ended noted that he was more than satisfied with how it turned out and with the fact that he was showing himself in public again with the Vice President, the man had warned that the situation could escalate. “Stay calm, don’t do anything,” Alberto told Kulfas in a brief WhatsApp message. But the minister ignored him and he dug his own grave for himself.
The departure of Kulfas, a historical Alberto who had an office in Callao when the now ill-fated group with the name of that street was founded, which was the only one to have its own office in the bunker in San Telmo during the elections, and which was the man who most represented the president’s economic thinking was a tsunami within the government. An earthquake that carried Rocca’s shadow in the middle.
Omnipresent. Although it may seem strange at first glance, the Italian-Argentine mega-businessman has a stronger presence within the red circle with this government than with the previous one. His shadow was already noticeable during the start of the pandemic, when the President – at a time when the entire country followed what he said every time he spoke and rewarded him with 80% approval – treated him as “miserable” for trying to shut down a plant with nearly 1,500 workers. However, the bravado did not go beyond that and now, almost two and a half years later, the relationship is different. Alberto saw well that Techint was left with the tender to build the pipes that will go to the gas pipeline. “It is that it is the only company that can do it now. It is not a matter of preference, it is a matter of time”, he explained to one of his reference economists, who had dinner with him recently. The man, who knows about public works and the tricks of businessmen, had suggested dividing that award and looking for a part to be made by China. The president’s blunt response left him surprised. It’s just that you may have missed some chapters.
Those who are part of the presidential circle say that it is not uncommon for Alberto to have dinner with Rocca from time to time -with whom he speaks very often-, a practice that in recent times has also begun to include the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán. They are meetings that, say those who speak with both sides of the rift, take place in a framework of dialogue and cordiality. It is also an event that has political logic: the group – which includes Tenaris, the company that makes the pipes in question, the Ternium steel company, Techint Engineering and Construction, the Tenovaene mining company, the Tecpetrol oil company and Humanitas, from the world of health- employs a total of 56 thousand people, and invoiced, only in 2021, US$ 27,100 million. To dimension, that amount is almost three quarters of Argentina’s debt with the IMF, but that is only tangible. The intangible perhaps weighs more: Rocca has oiled terminals with popes of all parties, dialogue with peers from around the world, and managed to monopolize the power of the two largest business groups in the country. In the Argentine Business Association (AEA), the organization that brings together the great owners of Argentina, he was the boss for a long time, but in the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) his landing was a novelty. In the middle of last year Rocca managed to sneak in Daniel Funes de Rioja as its new president -with the rarity that a lawyer, who does not own any industry, manages to lead that chamber-, in what was a scandal of proportions in the business world. Ignacio de Mendiguren, today president of the BICE public bank that was then fighting for that place, exploded and launched harsh accusations against Rocca. “I never paid bribes. And that’s why I never had to confess in court to having paid bribes. Let’s finish with a group that scares with the pen. As Paolo Rocca once said, in front of me: ‘we don’t want to participate in the entities, we want governability’”’, said “el Vasco”, in a direct dart against the Italian-Argentine and his participation in the cause of the notebooks , in which the then director of Techint, Luis Betnaza, had confessed to paying bribes. An irony: after the latest scandal unleashed by the vice president, Sergio Massa, on the afternoon of Saturday the 2nd, harshly insisted that Alberto designate Mendiguren as Kulfas’s replacement.
Either way, Rocca missed the missile. In fact, the withdrawal -at least public- of Betnaza from the bribery scandal made the mega-entrepreneur even more prominent within Techint and also in the group’s institutional relations, which he previously delegated to his side.
Mud. Kulfas gave an interview as soon as the act of controversy ended, and then approved a message sent off to the press, in which officials from Enarsa, the public company in the energy sector that controls Kirchnerism, were targeted for making a tender “Tailored to Techint”. Perhaps in the anger that prompted Kulfas to kick the board was the fact that the bidding CFK had complained about had involved his own troop.
But the message contained rude technical errors – a fact that caught the attention even of the Kulfas troops, accustomed to working under the rigid demands of the former minister – and, in addition, something more serious: in that off a collusion between the Christianity and Rocca. “You can tell Cristina everything, but accuse her of benefiting Rocca, with whom she always got along terrible? It is not knowing her”, explains a vice-presidential sidekick. It was a violation that blew up the precarious truce, which at that time had not yet reached 24 hours, in the air. “And that’s the worst, we can’t sustain the good news for a day,” lamented a national official.
Those who were in Olivos at the start of that Saturday the 4th swear that, in the first few minutes, Alberto wanted to avoid firing his minister. In that attempt there were several -in the ruling party they point to the survivors of Grupo Callao- pressuring the President in this regard, but finally a poisoned tweet from CFK complaining of the “pain” caused by “attacks” of this type dynamited everything for the airs. In the Fifth, however, they assure that an accurate intervention of the all-terrain general secretary, Julio Vitobello, had already managed to convince Alberto that he had to kick Kulfas out. On Monday the 6th -against the advice given to him that same Saturday by Massa, who, once again, insisted before the President on the idea of creating a productive mega-ministry with one of his men in charge-, the president received Kulfas at La Rosada , which was with his son. By then the Justice, via complaints from the opposition, had already begun to move (see box). Then the outgoing minister dispatched himself with a long letter that earned him criticism even from those who defended him within the Cabinet. “Leaving a government insulting in public is treasonous,” a concerned minister dispatched.
From the entire episode, those who know both Alberto and Cristina were left with an impression. “The debate, and that’s why CFK says about the pen, is because of the way each one understands power,” says a front-line official. The man shares a diagnosis that several of those who speak with the vice also have. “All of this is because she is worried about the finiteness of Central’s reserves, and because if we run out of dollars we end up badly,” he says. The adjudication of the assembly of the pipes will cost the treasury 500 million dollars (200 to make the plates and 300 to transform them into pipes). This is the core of the vice president’s approach: she is afraid that the economic situation will get out of control. She stopped having faith in Guzmán a while ago and thinks that Alberto does not fully understand how serious the situation is. That she does not understand the springs of the economy, that she does not understand power and, above all, that she does not fully understand who Paolo Rocca is or how to deal with him.
