The first time the name appeared Victoria Gotti it was from the mouth of Leonardo Farina in the program Jorge Lanatawhen the ex-husband of Karina Jelinek he said he was not going out because he was afraid they would kill him and the journalist asked him if he thought they would be able to “clean someone up”. “Find out what happened to old Gotti and tell me if they are not capable of cleaning,” Fariña said then.
Jelinek’s husband was referring to a businessman from Santa Cruz who arrived from Italy in 1950 and formed a construction company: Gotti Brothers. Victorio was born in 1932 and, 20 years after his arrival in America, he opened that family business in Patagonia. The business was going well, but It was with the arrival of the Kirchners to the administration of Río Gallegos that the head of the clan began to win public works tenders.
The Italian Lázaro Báez
At that time, the journalist -now deceased- Daniel Gatti ensured that more than 70% of public works of the province carried out during Kirchner’s efforts, first as mayor and later as governor, was executed by Gotti Hermanos.
At the end of 2003, the company founded by Gotti had about seven bankruptcy filings, and debts with suppliers that exceeded 3 million pesos. Despite all these irregularities, the company continued to receive awards for public works.
The relationship with the Kirchners was so fluid that the house they bought Nestor and Christina shortly after assuming the Presidency in 2003 -a three-story villa in Río Gallegos- It belonged to one of the Gotti brothers. According to reports, the property was purchased for $130,000.
The death of Victorio Gotti
On April 6, 2004, Victorio Gotti I was returning from Punta Arenas, Chile, where he had gone to buy trinkets. According to the journalistic chronicles of those years, the excessive speed that he was driving prevented him from taking a curve and the Jeep Cherokee began to stumble. The three occupants of the vehicle died: Gotti, his wife and a friend.
A year before Gotti’s death, and less than two months after the inauguration of Nestor Kirchner as president, the company had been formed Austral Constructions with Lazarus Baez to the head. Among the shareholders was Sergio Gotti, son of Victorio, and who would assume the presidency of Gotti Hermanos after the death of his father.
What Fariña wanted to imply in that interview was that Gotti’s death would have been more linked to business issues than to an unfortunate traffic accident.
by RN
