Argentine President Alberto Fernandez asked the courts to investigate
"without delay"
suspicions of occult practices of the previous government, after the controversy created by an opponent who in a meeting had wanted
"an
anti-union
Gestapo"
.
The monitor of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) last week seized justice with a video from 2017, recording a meeting of leaders close to the opposition (center-right), where judicial strategies against union leaders.
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In the video, the Minister of Labor of the important province of Buenos Aires held by the opposition, Marcelos Villegas, tells the participants:
"believe me (...) if I could have a Gestapo, an assault force to put an end to all the unions, I would ”.
The meeting, attended by officials, business leaders, elected officials including the mayor of La Plata (south), member of the PRO of ex-president Mauricio Macri, took place in a bank in Buenos Aires. In the video, Minister Villegas invites to arm and
“pre-build”
elements to
“add volume”
to the prosecution of trade unionists.
From the video, which filtered from the AFI archives at the end of December, the courts are investigating whether there was a systematic strategy of legal action against union leaders under the former governor (2015-2019) of the province of Buenos Aires Maria Eugenia Vidal, who remains one of the national figures of the center-right opposition. Since the video was leaked, Marcelos Villegas has expressed on the Infobae news site his
"sincere apologies for having clumsily used an absolutely inappropriate word, which, moreover, is far from my way of feeling, thinking and acting".
The Peronist president (center-left) Alberto Fernandez in a series of tweets on Tuesday enjoined the justice, yet on the verge of entering on summer judicial vacation,
"To investigate without delay and resolve the various responsibilities of the perpetrators and accomplices (...) given the gravity of the facts and the serious, precise and concordant evidence suggesting an illegal method of prosecution"
.
Alberto Fernandez said he had mandated AFI to take legal action on a wider field of Macri government's actions also relating to
"incitement to illegal espionage"
.
He recalled having discovered, when he took office at the end of 2019, the existence of around a hundred encrypted telephones provided by AFI to senior officials, but also magistrates, business leaders, close to the former. President.
Mauricio Macri has also been charged since December with alleged espionage of families of victims of the “San Juan”, a submarine whose sinking left 44 dead in 2017, an accusation that he denies as
“political persecution”.
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