02/21/2021 2:54 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/21/2021 3:09 PM
The Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, received the Russian vaccine Sputnik V against the coronavirus.
The news is known in the midst of the "VIP vaccination" scandal that ended with the resignation of the Minister of Health, Ginés González García.
Sources close to the economist affirmed that the dose was applied a few days ago by
"indication of the presidential medical team
.
"
They also adduce issues of an alleged agenda that the minister was going to have in the United States, something that so far has not materialized.
Neither the IMF nor the United States government have scheduled meetings with Guzmán.
As these sources pointed out to Clarín, the minister is one of the exceptional cases because he is considered a
"strategic official of the State"
due to the "important and decisive" issues that he handles.
The same source added that the instruction came before the presidential tour that he will undertake with the Head of State for the next few hours to Mexico:
"The presidential doctors recommended that he be vaccinated days before that trip."
From the Ministry of Economy they gave another explained.
The minister was going to travel to the United States to discuss issues related to debt negotiation and that is why he was vaccinated.
But the trip was not closed yet when he received Sputnik.
The United States does not ask for a Covid vaccine to enter
.
Martín Guzmán had no confirmed meeting with either the Monetary Fund or with Joe Biden's government authorities
.
Neither in the Argentine embassy in Washington they have in their hands an agenda of meetings of the economist in that city.
And yet the Minister of Economy received the vaccine in Buenos Aires.
Guzmán is negotiating with the IMF an agreement to finance the maturity of a US $ 44 billion debt that will mature over the next three years.
The first two payments fall in September and December (about US $ 3.8 billion).
For this, the government has been talking with the authorities of the agency to sign an agreement on extended facilities.
The
negotiation
had
twists and turns
since last October.
The government publicly said that it was seeking to close the deal as soon as possible.
Then that haste died down.
In the last weeks that oscillating attitude was repeated again.
Guzmán said ten days ago that the ideal would be to agree by May.
Then the Argentine representative at the IMF, Sergio Chodos, said that "it is not a priority that the agreement be signed in May."
At the IMF, his spokesman, Gerry Rice, said on February 4 that
Guzmán "could travel to Washington at the end of this month or early next
.
"
However, the organization says that no meeting has been scheduled so far.
There are no face-to-face meetings of the US government's technical teams in Washington
so far, official sources explained to this newspaper.
The PIA authorities indicated that the facts raised - in addition to the serious irregularities that would have been verified when a "VIP vaccination" was arranged, accessed through "contact" with the now former minister - "would be revealing serious abuses of power in the performance of public function ".
The forced departure of González García was the response of President Alberto Fernández after the confession of the journalist Horacio Verbitsky that unleashed the scandal.
In place of the now former official, Carla Vizzotti, who until now had served as Secretary of Access to Health, was made official this Saturday.
AFG
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