the note of NEWS August 2016 counted exclusively as “Lázaro Báez charged surcharges of 65%“. And it laid bare as a government audit (then commissioned by Javier Iguacel in the administration of Mauricio Macri), discovered that the budgets of three works of the alleged figurehead K. There you read the following, quoted today by Cristina Kirchner during his exhibition at the Cause road.
Cristina Kirchner I was in the middle of the interview with the journalist Robert Navarroon July 3, 2016, when he released a phrase that set off many alarms: “I am going to propose an audit to the judge to all the public works carried out in my government”, he assured, in what seemed like an attempt to clear suspicions that exist about the businessman Lázaro Báez, alleged figurehead of the presidential family.
It may interest you: “Cristina Kirchner, condemnation vs. proscription: who leads the Twitter war”
In the Ezeiza prison The sentence sounded like a gunshot and the owner of Austral Construcciones he decided to speak:Cristina used me as a lining”, He assured in a report to Infobae that strangely was published three weeks after it was made.
But CFK’s proposal also reached the ears of the new administration of National Directorate of Roads (DNV) and the Anti-Corruption Office, who were already working on a review of the works and who only had to speed up the pace to present a complaint to which NOTICIAS accessed exclusively. The idea of the former president was a shot that backfired: from the first three works audited it emerged that there was a surcharge of 64.72% and many irregularities in its adjudications.
It may interest you: “Defenders of CFK: what Ofelia Fernández, Diego Brancatelli and Julia Mengolini said”
The works that the DNV put in the magnifying glass are three sections of National Route No. 3, in the provinces of Santa Cruz and Chubut, tendered between August 2006 and September 2007. In total there are 3,775 kilometers and the route of the ring road of Olivia Cove. The official budget for these works, which they were not finished, was 141 million dollars. An insignificant amount if one takes into account that, according to the same complaint from Vialidad, the Austral Group received between 2007 and 2015 2,196 million dollars.
Since his confinement in Ezeiza, Báez tried to distance himself from CFK: “When she came to government we stopped having an active participation in anything.” However, her company was the construction company that received the most money during the period in which Cristina was president. In the ranking prepared by Vialidad, it appears that the Austral Group is the first on the listwith more than double the money received than the one who appears second, JCR SA, a company of the deceased Juan Carlos Relats (also linked to the former president), who received 1,100 million dollars.
The official investigation found vices that are too obvious. In some tenders, Austral offered exactly (even in cents) what the General Provincial Road Administration and the National Road Directorate calculated in the estimated budget, which should have been unknown by the companies until the envelopes were opened. “They knew perfectly and with surgical precision the terms of the most convenient offer,” he wrote in his Javier Alberto Iguacel denounces, the new general administrator of the DNV.
It may interest you: “Cristina Kirchner’s blooper with a soccer player”
From that report it appears that in one of the sections of National Route No. 9, the other bidders “knew a priori that their bids would not be successful.” The other companies that had presented themselves were Kank and Costilla SA (directed by Martin Baez) and Petersen Thiele y Cruz SA (linked to the Eskenazi group), who were disqualified for not meeting any requirement. That way, the election was directed to Austral.
Other irregularities arise as a result of the striking speed with which the contest was held. Continuing with the previous case, once the envelopes were opened, in a period of six working days the work was pre-awarded, awarded and the contract was signed, which was approved by Provincial Roads. The same day that the agreement was signed, work began and two weeks later the payment of 30% of the work, which was paid within 48 hours.
It may interest you: “Why are Mauricio Macri and ‘Nicky’ Caputo estranged”
Too many messes together. But Lazarus Baez sees himself as the scapegoat of this factory of corruption. Therefore, overcome by anger, he said: “Listen to me. Who approves the national budget? The National Executive. And who participates in that? The Ministry of Planning. Who says where things have to be built? Government! We are not the ones who chose such a thing.” Báez slaps from the well. If he goes down, trust that many will go down with him.
by RN
Image gallery
