It was a very bad week for José Luis Espert. To the scoop of the newspaper and the newspaper AR, where they revealed a transfer of 200 thousand dollars of Fred Machado to the deputy, which was Sunday, then came up with the publications of Clarín and the nation where they realized the 35 trips he made on the Machado plane in 2019, and also the bank proof of that transfer. But it is not the only thing that pursues the first Liberty candidate advances in Buenos Aires. His dark past also returned as a ghost.
There is everything in this story. Silver that disappeared from the campaigns (as his own people denounced), a millionaire raffle more than suspicious, a trial in which Machado’s lawyer defended him and a complaint from Milei’s own for bribery.
The first story is from the end of 2020. The 2019 campaign had already passed, with all the complaints of financing towards Espert. Not only Machado’s silver caught attention, but the political sponsor? of the then head of government Rodríguez Larreta. In a zoom the forist Carlos Maslatón had been denouncing that support. And Gonzalo Díaz Córdoba, the sister campaign manager in 2019.
In 2019 Milei, Mariano Fernández and Diego Giacomomini (the only two friends he once had) went to meet Carlos Saúl Menem. In that meeting (where he first appeared at the radar of the libertarian Martín Menem) the Turk told them “Eye with Hote, they are putting Duhalde silver and intendants of the Peronism of the Conurbano”. This is at least what Giacomomini and Fernández Post Meeting told (and Milei seemed to endorse when he signed a requested in 2019 withdrawing support for sister for “not supporting the ideas of freedom”).
In 2021 things had changed. Milei debuted in the policy of the hand of Sister, and this seems to demand a loyalty test. He denounced Giacomi and Fernández for walking what they said had happened at the meeting with Menem. Milei witnessed his former friends at the trial. And it was a surprise who were in charge of sponsoring the now candidate in Buenos Aires: Diego Spagnuolo and Francisco Oneto. This is key: it shows that Oneto was not only Machado and Milei’s lawyer, but also of Espert.
For 2022 Milei and Espert had fought. According to Milei in private, Espert had wanted to bribe with 300 thousand dollars – his Larreta – to lower his candidacy. Many of their space also said it in public, such as Agustín Romo and Lilia Lemoine, among others. Daniel “El Gordo Dan” Parisini also: “The Javo personally confirmed it to me once we saw ourselves. Espert had tried to lower his candidacy for twine. And that’s why he had left,” he said in a tweet at the end of 2022. In an October note of that year with Fantino, Miei told him, although without mentioning Espet: “They wanted to bribe me with 300 thousand dollars.
The end of 2024 happened more than striking. On September 30, the term of the “Raúl Prebisch” contest of the Central Bank expired. It was a prize of four million pesos for the best economy thesis. But on August 29, a month earlier, the BCRA changed the parameters very strikingly: it went from accepting published theses from 2021 onwards to those of 2018 onwards. Who entered his thesis through the window? Espert, who took the four million. There is also another issue: the obvious incompatibility of being an official deputy and president of the Budget Commission and staying a million from the State. In fact, Jorge Carrera, a Conicet researcher who was one of the creators of that contest. “I think it was an important error of the authorities to change the norm to allow their participation. It is very likely that it has been at the request of the sorry himself. The main point is that Espert should not have appeared. He knows that, being a deputy of the nation, puts the institution and the jury in a commitment.”
There is also, of course, the dark link that unites Espert with Machado. And that still fails to explain.
