Lucia Salinas
03/21/2021 5:27 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 03/21/2021 5:29 PM
"Nobody can do things better than me, but since I can't be in everything, I am satisfied if they do it a little badly."
That was one of the head phrases of Franco Macri, the patriarch of the clan.
And the message was addressed to three of his children: Mauricio, Gianfranco and Mariano.
Now, in the middle of the process of processing a millionaire succession, the Macri brothers live a present full of inmates, claims, invoice passes and complex judicial fronts.
And that phrase of Franco is updated.
Male children are charged in the middle of two books with family and political revelations.
Added to this is a complex sale of shares, accusations of extortion, and unanswered calls that mark the pulse of the former president's relationship with his two brothers.
"I'm not going to read it, let the lawyer see it,"
said Mauricio Macri when Hermano, Santiago O'Donnell's book based on conversations with his brother Mariano, came out.
The relationship was already broken, if they did not talk about each other several years ago, now no one wants to pick up the phone to contact the other.
The former president's legal advisor, Pablo Lanusse, was responsible for reading the copy as soon as it came out.
The thesis that had already been heard in the offices of SOCMA, the business group that Franco Macri set up, resounded again:
"It's extortion, he wants more money for the shares."
The explanation of Mauricio Macri's belief, shared by his brother Gianfranco, has three recent chapters, one written on each of the occasions in which Mariano wanted to dissociate himself from SOCMA today valued at around 300 million dollars.
He owns 20% of the stock package and in the last failed attempt to sell, the figure placed in his possession did not satisfy him: it was worth five times more to him.
The company told him that this difference was impossible to justify.
The papers were left on the table unsigned, once again.
In this last negotiation, Gianfranco was going to buy his stake and thus, he was going to own 60% of SOCMA.
Mariano Macri, the brother of the former president who wrote the book "Hermano", where he reveals alleged dark deals.
Gianfranco three years younger than Mauricio,
always wanted to build his own path outside the offices of his father's holding company, with ventures abroad and Buenos Aires Golf, however, he was left with the largest number of shares because in 2017 he was the one who acquired those that were in the name of three of Mauricio Macri's adult children.
The two of them was a relationship of differences, but they ended up “being functional,
” someone from the family explained.
Gianfranco had complex legal complaints: he appeared in the Panama Papers as the head of eight offshore firms, in addition to having laundered $ 35.5 million thanks to a decree during his brother's presidency.
For Mariano, as he maintained in Hermano, he
was always a "figurehead for Mauricio, he put his face in front of the group while Mauricio preserved himself."
The former head of state, had disposed of Socma's shares in 2007 but kept the usufruct, his heirs were shareholders represented by officials, but three years later and after the complaint of the prosecutor Gabriela Bouquin about the agreement for the negotiation of The debt of Correo SA, during the macro-government administration, everything changed.
It was not Mauricio Macri's suggestion, his children raised it long before: they had seen the photographs of Máximo and Florencia Kirchner entering Comodoro Py, the children of Lázaro Báez, those of Cristóbal López.
Everything made them feel that they could be in the same circumstances.
At present it is the greatest concern of the former president.
Thus it was that Gianfranco acquired his shares, a negotiation that aroused suspicions in Mariano who kept 20% of the package.
Something that possibly "with Franco alive would not have happened," indicated company sources.
Mariano was always opposed to Gianfranco's accumulation of power, there were judicial measures, and he still believes that they are financially defrauding him.
Gianfranco Macri brother of former President Mauricio Macri in the Federal Courts of Comodoro Py.
Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
The brothers once coincided in Socma, all with different roles,
but all failed in the attempt to please the founder and owner of the holding company, their father.
Mariano, with two master's degrees, training abroad, handling five languages, was in charge of business in Brazil and China, two strategic partners.
He did not last many years in those positions.
The greatest bet of Franco Macri, was always Mauricio
"but he chose politics"
was the reply of the father who always exposed his displeasure with such a decision.
"Franco would wake him up (Mauricio) at five thirty in the morning to go over the works, he could have done it at nine, but Franco always said that only what is achieved with sacrifice is worth," said a person from the family environment.
It was his first "dolphin" as heard on more than one occasion in Socma where he knew how to have an office.
Who was still on his list of bets to continue his business legacy, was Mariano, but he could not stand.
In this context, Franco considered that he no longer had heirs for his holding company.
Mauricio was already fully dedicated to politics, and the relationship with Mariano was extremely complicated.
One day he called Angelo Calcaterra, cousin of the former president and possibly whom he considers more of a brother than his own, and asked him to join Socma: "None of my children will be able to take care of this," he said.
So, he resigned from his father's company and replaced the former president in the holding company.
Years later, when he arrived at the Casa Rosada, the cousin parted company with IECSA, the construction company.
Only two years later, he became involved in the cause known as the Cuadernos de las Coimas.
Franco had been delegating different tasks to them within the economic group that is divided into four areas: automotive, ecology, oil services and agriculture.
"I always looked over their shoulder when I assigned something to them," say those who knew this complex dynamic closely.
Nobody did things like him, and he always passed it on to his children.
Mauricio Macri dedicated himself to politics, with marked differences with his father.
Gianfranco confronted several times and Mariano got into a fight before leaving the China business.
The book where Mariano Macri reveals family business and aroused an intern in the clan.
Then Mariano's attempts to leave Socma began.
But the end result was always the same, the unsigned papers on the meeting table of the offices located on the 18th floor. The last attempt, which was to make Gianfranco the owner of 60% of the group, failed weeks before let the Brother book go out on the street.
But it had been a long time since Mariano had spoken to Mauricio and Gianfranco.
Gianfranco is now the one who manages the companies although his monitoring is not in person.
For now, he lives in Uruguay but immersed in the daily life of the company.
Without including his brothers in the guest list, much less in the acknowledgments of his book, the former president reappeared with the Primer Tiempo presentation before an audience of 600 people.
In the company he made noise.
They maintain that their political activity affects the holding company, which is the epicenter of the largest family inmates.
"Gianfranco pays for the broken dishes of Mauricio's political life," they indicated from their surroundings.
One of his latest complaints in a virtual meeting of the holding company, referred to the comments received by his daughters and the association of the surname that lead to corruption, or to the economic problems of the country.
Until approximately three months ago,
Gianfranco was the one who received his brother Mariano's complaints.
A final discussion put an end to the communication.
After the book was published and communications began to be through Socma's attorneys.
Neither the former president nor the group's majority shareholder responded to the calls.
But Mauricio and Gianfranco Macri agree on something, they assure that neither read the book El Hermano, of which Mariano a week ago, assured in court that he did not authorize the publication of his statements and that he did not have information to incriminate the business decisions of his family .
Prior to that, the former president told the holding company trusted people: "Prepare yourselves" before the imminent release of the copy to the street.
That single word left something on the surface, he was not going to read it but it disturbed him that his brother took out a book to expose something with a lot of history: the family intern, crossed by the shadow of the father and founder of the holding company that led them all to Justice.