Former President Alberto Fernández was Superintendent of National Insurance with former President Carlos Menem, he knows in depth the underworld of insurance and reinsurance and
was in the middle of the frustrated attempt to liquidate the National Reinsurance Institute (INDER), one of the knots of corruption in Argentina
.
After his tenure in that strategic organization in the nineties, several of his collaborators ended up being prosecuted - although they were finally dismissed - for irregularities and that time in the public administration and
even caused the censorship of a note by journalist Julio Nudler in Página 12.
Between 1989 and 1995, Alberto was Superintendent of National Insurance, after having a minor position in the Ministry of Economy under Raúl Alfonsín.
He served as head of that body that must
control the insurance market
until six months before the resignation of Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo on July 26, 1996 due to his fights with Menem.
During that period Alberto was also president of the Association of Insurance Superintendents of Latin America between 1989 and 1992, co-founder of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors and ALADI Insurance expert.
Cavallo tried
to privatize INDER but Congress rejected it and then decided to intervene to liquidate it.
In the process he appointed Roberto Guzmán
as intervener.
But the economist from the Mediterranean Foundation, known for his hyper-honesty,
could not settle it because supposed new INDER debts had been generated with private insurance companies.
Cavallo then
hired former prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and his partner Hugo Wortman Jofré to investigate internal corruption.
At first,
“Alberto was elusive”
in the internal investigation, judicial sources
told
Clarín .
In addition, one of his sisters was legal advisor to INDER, which -on the other hand-
was a “political fund” with a board of directors made up of eight politicians and officials.
But months later, Alberto “collaborated” with Moreno Ocampo and Wortam and a criminal complaint was filed
against those companies before Judge Jorge Urso
, who after several twists and turns ended up, over the years, allowing the dismissal of the accused.
However, Cavallo continued to support Roberto Guzmán and even
gave him a prologue to his book titled “Assured Looting, Corruption in the Insurance Business and the Salta Case” published in 1997.
In that introduction, the former minister affirms that INDER was
“one of the organizations most invaded by corruption and the negotiations of hyper-regulated Argentina.”
He assured that after two years of operation of an INDER Liquidation Commission - before Guzmán's administration - "the apparent debt of the organization
had quadrupled
."
Guzmán was liquidator of INDER between 1994 and 1996.
He said that Guzmán "perplexedly expressed to us (in 1996)
his astonishment at the stagnation of judicial cases full of damning evidence
, enough to put a good number of highly renowned officials, lobbyists and public personnel behind bars."
Guzman reveals in detail how the “trial industry” against INDER worked and gives as an example a car crash that occurred in La Rioja in 1983, where the victim was paid 14 thousand dollars and the lawyers and experts - linked to a Menemist official - who intervened They ended up collecting
$1,400,000.
In 2007, the late journalist Julio Nudler tried to publish in 2004 in Página 12 the article titled
“Puppets and Puppeteers”
for the appointment of Claudio Moroni to the General Audit Office of the Nation (Sigen).
The newspaper K did not allow him to do so because it described an alleged “business network” between Moroni and Alberto Fernández when both were numbers one and two in the National Insurance Superintendency.
According to Nudler – who denounced censorship of the official newspaper and was harshly criticized by journalist K Horacio Verbitsky – between 1994 and 1996 they pressured Guzmán to “recognize a debt with the insurance sector of 1.2 billion dollars, when later Guzmán himself showed that it was barely
500 million
.”
The note is also related to the so-called “Intelisano Case.”
Juan Intelisano was an official in the Ministry of Economy and was prosecuted for having authorized
a payment of $54 million to a group of insurers who had claimed that amount from the former National Savings and Insurance Fund
that was privatized in the 90s.
Intelisano, who was undersecretary of Administration and Asset Normalization of the Ministry of Economy, released those millions in 2007 and for that reason he was prosecuted in June 2010 by the then federal judge and current member of the Supreme Court of Justice of Buenos Aires Sergio Torres along with other former officials and the businessmen who participated in the maneuver.
There are other causes where the management of Alberto and his collaborators at the head of that superintendency was investigated.
In 2017, for example, federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral prosecuted Claudio Moroni for the crime of noncompliance with the duties of a public official
due to the lack of control over the alleged emptying of the company Sudamérica Compañía de Seguros de Vida Patrimoniales SA (SAVIDA).
.
In the case involving Canicoba Corral, there were several insurance companies under investigation in separate files.
What is investigated in each case is the alleged emptying of the firms through the
creation of parallel companies of the same group to which the insured portfolio was transferred
, but not the claims.
The consequence was that the hundreds of insured people who suffered accidents were left without the support of the original firm.
Moroni ended up being acquitted.
And now, seven years later,
Alberto Fernández is once again being investigated for corruption in the world of insurance
for having, supposedly, encouraged the introduction of intermediaries in the taking of insurance by the State during his presidential administration.
Paradoxically, INDER - an emblematic case of corruption in the world of insurance and after Guzmán's death - 30 years later
"still could not finish being liquidated,"
said the judicial source with resignation.