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For Lázaro Báez's rebellious son, 'Florencia doesn't have jurisdiction like Máximo, that's why now they defend dad'

2021-03-02T22:28:27.002Z


In an interview with Clarín, Leandro Báez admits that Néstor "helped" his father, and repeats that "Cristina must be concerned" with the condemnation of her entire family.


Lucia Salinas

03/02/2021 18:46

  • Clarín.com

  • Politics

Updated 03/02/2021 18:47

"You're the closest to your old man,"

he listens tirelessly and nods.

He knows.

But immediately, it differs:

"I don't keep quiet at all

.

"

Thus, Leandro Báez insists that his father,

Lázaro Báez, did not tell everything he knows

.

His comments, the messages he sends, have a single recipient: the Kirchner family, more specifically the vice president.

He did not speak to his father for more than a year.

They discussed personally in the visiting room of the Ezeiza prison, they continued by phone and the distance was inevitable.

They met again after the conviction that left him on the brink of jail.

He spoke with

Clarín

de Cristina, Máximo, about joint ventures.

He is thirty years old.

He is explosive in his statements, in which he does not hide his anger based on two reasons: the responsibility that he attributes to his father and which resulted in him, his brother and his two sisters having ended up condemned and with other trials at the door;

and outside the family circle 

his discomfort is with Cristina Kirchner, Máximo Kirchner

and the environment most faithful to the vice president.

Since he was young, he has kept the low profile that Lázaro Báez sought to give his family, even when he was enjoying his freedom and did not leave Río Gallegos, with the exception of private plane trips that ended in meetings at Quinta de Olivos.

One morning Leandro's truck ended up crashed in the window of a commercial premises in the capital of Santa Cruz.

Businessman K gave the order to the family's lawyer to let him be detained in the police station cell:

Leandro was only 22 years old, he had fled and on the way, he collided with other cars.

 His father forced him to apologize and pay for all the repairs.

But neither of them imagined that the next confrontations between them would take place with one of the two imprisoned.

Over the years, the youngest of the Báez clan became a kind of spokesman for his brothers: 

"I tell my truth and what many think but no one dares to say,"

says Leandro in dialogue with this newspaper.

His tone of voice is low - at times monotonous, something "very Baez" - and every so often he outlines a smile.

He was sentenced to five years in prison, and although he does not use the word fear, he acknowledges that

there is not a day that he does not think about the possibility of ending up behind bars

: "it is rather concern," he explains.

His father is still in prison, although under house arrest, his brother has been detained for two years.

He does not rule out that it may happen to him.

Leandro Báez, interviewed by Nicolás Wiñazki.

Tevé capture.

In 2011, after abandoning his studies in Buenos Aires, Leandro was appointed alternate director at Austral Construcciones.

"Start getting into the company," was the imperative tone of the father's suggestion, a Lazaro by then already powerful.

That first position earned him a few discussions with the head of the clan.

An anecdote sums it up: the youngest of the four Báez fired an employee of the construction company seven times, because with each dismissal Lázaro reinstated him.

He never delegated, he always had to control everything

 and be present, and that was broken in 2016 when he was imprisoned.

It was impossible to control everything from jail ”, explains Leandro.

Thus he was getting into the group that ended up under the sights of justice.

But he dedicated himself to the nucleated fields in 

Austral Agro: "I prefer to deal with 40,000 animals than with your people and the company,

" Leandro told his father in a heated discussion.

He never again stepped on the Austral Construcciones property, seized and about to be auctioned in the framework of the bankruptcy of the firm.

However, he admits that he is sad to see the closed offices, the rusted machinery and the hallmark of the decaying family.

Is there a way to explain your father's fortune without doing business with the Kirchners?

His friend helped him, of course he helped him

, in the sense that he told him to cheer up with the company and prepare it for the contracts that were going to be overturned in the province.

Justice maintains that this aid, in reality, was to convert "the presidential friend into a construction businessman", despite having no experience in the field.

Later, he was awarded 51 tenders for 46,000 million pesos.

Everything was granted under irregularities and

surcharges of an average 65%

, the justice said.

At that point Cristina Kirchner enters, accused of directing from her government the millionaire sums for who was her business partner.

"

Cristina Kirchner must be concerned

because if Lázaro is an emblem of corruption,

there can be no corruption without officials and it was said that the preceding crime was public works

."

Theorize a little more about it, and believe in the facts that can be a mirror of others in the future.

What happened to you and your brothers, do you think could happen to Máximo and Florencia Kirchner?

Yes, because justice has shown that it can move forward in that sense.

So, I think Cristina is worried about that and especially because

Florencia does not have jurisdiction as Máximo,

that's why now they came out to defend Lázaro.

Leandro went two years without seeing his father.

They met again days before the sentence and Lázaro was able to meet his youngest grandson in person.

The male children of businessman K have a middle name Antonio, like him.

The youngest of the clan broke with tradition and no longer gave his two sons that middle name.

In that meeting they did not speak of Cristina: they no longer speak of her, and the few times that she appeared in the talk, Lázaro called her by her surname, Fernández. 

"Kirchner never told him nor is he going to tell him."

The relationship with the Kirchner family "existed, it is clear," emphasizes Leandro.

Justice put a number on that:

28 commercial ties

, and while Báez was a state contractor,

his assets jumped from 66 million pesos to more than 3,000 million

in ten years.

"All his assets were declared, of course there was business with the Kirchners," he repeats, but in that abrupt increase in properties - which the court determined was with money of illicit origin - he does 

not see any crime.

Leandro Báez with one of his sisters, during one of the hearings of the trial for the Ruta del Dinero K, in October 2018. Photo Federico López Claro.

He did not expect a strong defense in 2016 in favor of his father, but they did say something,

"I expected a gesture from Cristina, from Máximo Kirchner

,

" he

admits.

They were not strangers.

They are not.

And he remembers that when they had requested the arrest of him and his brothers, they traveled on the same Aerolineas flight with Máximo, and despite having played a soccer game on his father's farm

that day, they neither greeted each other nor looked at each other.

“That day they bitched us saying that we had stolen everything, Máximo got into a blue car with Pedro's Wado and took off.

That gave us the indication that

Lazaro had been released from his hand

. "

He is encouraged to sketch one more theory: that his father was handed over: "they made an exchange of figurines and

left him as an emblem of corruption and they forgot about the officials

."

At this point in the file, he reiterates that Lázaro had the opportunity to speak, to tell his truth.

When Leandro is asked what he means by "his truth", he raises two things: "To explain the role of each of his children, that we had nothing to do with the laundering operations (the justice considered otherwise, are beneficiaries of all the accounts located in Switzerland used for the laundering of 60 million dollars), and on the other hand, to clarify

who really handled the money that was abroad. 

We were beneficiaries of the accounts but

we never saw a weight of that

”.

He remembers when his father separated himself from the administration and care of the Mausoleum where the body of Néstor Kirchner is, and places that situation, that last talk in the villa in Olivos between Báez and Cristina, as the definitive breakdown.

“Since Nestor died, the relationship was different;

he never got along with Cristina.

She never wanted it and got rid of it

, "says Leandro, who recalls:"

They had businesses together, even after Nestor's death. "

She distinguishes that it is not something personal against the vice president, "but she must be concerned, there

is talk of a preceding crime where she is

," and maintains that he crossed her in the Cruz Aike ranch, many years ago, in a barbecue that her father made.

"She was kind to say hello, but always closed to her people. I have nothing to say about her, but we did expect some gesture." 

He does not choose silence and his father does not like that, who repeatedly asks him to lower his profile, not to go to the media to speak.

Leandro repeats the same number of times:

"There is too much silence, someone has to say things

.

"

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-03-02

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