Lucia Salinas
08/18/2021 1:43 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 08/18/2021 1:43 PM
In 1992, under the government of Néstor Kirchner, in 1992,
Santa Cruz received more than 630 million dollars in badly paid oil royalties.
Those funds that were
sent to Switzerland
and were repatriated after 2006 without a detail of the interest or the movement of that money, but their decline was constant.
According to the latest rendition before the Court of Accounts,
there are only $ 9,451.23 left.
Santa Cruz funds continue to decline.
Although more than 75% of Santa Cruz residents depend on the public administration,
they were never applied to the reconversion of the provincial economy
,
and they were used for current expenses
since 2007.
The report on its use is delivered each year as a surrender to the Court of Accounts of Santa Cruz, with the signature of the chief auditor of the central administration.
It was reduced to just four pages, and he admits that
that money no longer has any kind of movement.
"Based on the analysis of the documentation provided by the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure of the province of Santa Cruz, the balances as of December 31, 2020 of the Extra-budgetary Financial Assets of the province are
certified
in the sum of
9,451.23 dollars
", maintains the surrender to which
Clarín
agreed
.
The money is in
an account of Banco Santa Cruz
based in the city of Buenos Aires, and since he returned to our country his balance has only decreased.
The member of the Court of Accounts for the minority,
Yanina Gribaudo
(UCR) explained to
Clarín
that, despite her dissent, "again the Court of Accounts certified the funds from the extra-budgetary financial assets."
"These resources should have been used to boost our economy, generate jobs and development, but they disappeared without us knowing what they were used for," Gribaudo claimed.
The opposition in Santa Cruz always denounced that
the Court of Accounts never exercised control
over the financial-asset management and registration of fund operations. For this reason, this Court was
never technically able to determine how much
these extra-budgetary financial assets
actually amounted to
, "said the UCR representative.
One of the arguments made in the dissenting vote was that the behavior of the Court before the Santa Cruz Funds "was one of
total negligence
, something demonstrated at the time of the enactment of Law 2,663, which produces the consolidation of the extrabudgetary funds to the December 31, 2002, and later the Court of Accounts, when issuing its certifying Resolution, concluded that
the existing balances in the account had been omitted. "
The opposition always argued that
this consolidated figure was lower than real money
, that is, it
far exceeded the 662 million dollars
that Kirchnerism held in the account when they were expatriated.
This money was received in the 1990s as compensation for badly paid oil royalties from YPF-Repsol.
The then governor of Santa Cruz deposited it in a Credit Suisse account that
for years generated interest and commissions that were not reflected in his repatriation
.
The UCR from Santa Cruz even denounced that Néstor Kirchner
put the money in his name
for several years.
The first complaint for the Santa Cruz funds made by the radical lawyer
Juan Carlos Iglesias
in 2003 was in a court in Comodoro Py, but the final decision was a declaration of incompetence and
the file was sent to Santa Cruz
, where the justice managed by Kirchnerism
quickly closed the case
.
The axis of the complaint claimed that part of the funds would have been used to
“leverage” a loan from the Swiss bank UBS that was used to purchase 25 percent of YPF's shares
by the Petersen group.
When the money was repatriated, after accumulating complaints and a vacuum of more than a decade regarding the information on the handling of that money, the Front for Victory promised to
allocate that money "to the industrialization of the province
.
"
But that never happened, and
only 38 million dollars were used for the construction of a cement plant in Pico Truncado
, by decision of
Sergio Acevedo
who was in front of the provincial administration.
Between 1996 and 2002 there was no surrender of Santa Cruz assets.
In 2003 Acevedo assumed the governorship, and two years later he promised the repatriation of the money, something that only happened in 2007, under the administration of
Daniel Peralta.
How much money was there then?
The FPV admitted in 2003 in the provincial legislature that another 532 million dollars had been added to the more than 632 million originally collected, without explaining the origin of that money.
Thus, Santa Cruz funds abroad
would have reached 1,061 million dollars
.
Then, when the repatriation announcement was made, they
laundered only 554 million.
The route of money and politics
When in 2007 Governor Peralta received the money that had spent fifteen years in Switzerland, 199 million dollars were deposited from abroad that were supposedly to be used to solve a conflict with teachers, who demanded salary increases in the middle of a tension Social.
But a year later,
Néstor Kirchner from the presidency only allowed 27 million dollars to be used for teachers.
By the end of 2010, according to the Court of Auditors, only about $ 95 million remained.
The Peralta government announced that year that it would
allocate some 80 million of those funds to cover the budget deficit.
In the middle, again there was darkness and suspicions of mismanagement.
The last file was dated December 31, 2012 with a surrender of
$ 30,000
. That same year, in May, Cristina Kirchner
from Tucumán said that the funds "evaporated"
without giving further explanations. The then president
blamed Governors Acevedo and Peralta
, who had come to power with the backing and support of Nestor Kirchner and were part of the Frente Para la Victoria.
