The fight between the national government and the province of Santa Fe over the drug trafficking crisis adds a new chapter every day.
After the Peronist governor Omar Perotti
reiterated his complaints about the lack of help from the Nation
so that the province could reinforce surveillance and prevention in Rosario, the Government came out to remember that Santa Fe has already received funds specifically to buy equipment for the security forces and that it took more than a year to use that money.
In October 2020, the Government
transferred 3,000 million pesos to Santa Fe
through an Institutional Cooperation and Financial Assistance Agreement signed by Perotti and the then Chief of Staff Santiago Cafiero, after a meeting in which President Alberto also participated. Fernandez.
The transfer of funds, which was also signed with other provinces such as Buenos Aires, was intended to buy communications equipment, cameras and patrol cars for the provincial security forces to urgently reinforce security in the hottest areas at the exit of the quarantine.
For this reason, the agreement provided that purchases should be made within a period of less than three months.
Despite this, the Santa Fe opposition itself denounced a year later that the Santa Fe government had not used the 3,000 million.
In October 2021,
the socialist deputy Lionella Cattalini
declared: “One year after the announcements, and by virtue of the new ones, we wonder where the money invested is, because until now we have only found a file (which is not advancing) of a tender for the purchase of a computer system that would be destined for the Ministry of Security”, said Cattalini, in a direct criticism of the then security minister of Santa Fe, Marcelo Saín.
According to Catallani, when the government of Santa Fe detailed the first tender to use these funds, it was contemplating buying 5,209 "robust telephones" that are special cell phones for the police to have, and a year later -devaluation and inflation through- the purchase was tendered of 2,164 telephones.
The same happened with personal cameras for police officers: 526 were planned to be purchased and 343 were included in the second call for bids, and also with the tracking system, which went from 3,090 in the first attempt to 2,409 units.
Sources from the Casa Rosada say that to date Santa Fe
has never provided these funds
and has not reported what the transferred 3,000 million pesos was used for.
Perotti, who at the beginning of the Fernández government was one of the governors closest to the President, distanced himself from the Casa Rosada in recent months.
One of his differences arose with the complaints about the lack of support from the national government to solve the security crisis in Rosario, although he also distanced himself from the impeachment of the Supreme Court promoted by the President.
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Omar Perotti said that it would be irresponsible not to ask for help against the drug traffickers and accused the opposition of doing "political tourism" in Rosario
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Pablo Javkin on the threat to Messi in Rosario: "This was not a matter of criminal gangs, here there is dirt from politics, from the police"
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Larreta traveled to Rosario to meet with Javkin: "It is not true that the battle against drug trafficking was lost"