The lawyers of tobacco businessman Pablo Otero sent a document letter to journalist Andrés Sanguinetti
"intimating him" to "immediately remove from the Internet and social networks
the note
"A 'dubious' tobacco company already handles 45% of the cigarette market local"
, which he published on a news portal on March 12.
The document letter is signed by lawyer Gabriel Palmeiro, who established his address in the studio he shares with his partner Maximiliano Rusconi, some of whose main clients were
Cristina Kirchner, Diego Lagomarsino, Lázaro Báez and Julio de Vido,
among others.
The lawyers ordered journalist Sanguinetti to also desist from continuing to present "untruthful information" about Otero "and the company he presides over," Tabacalera Sarandí. And to
"retract" the "false, offensive and harassing expressions." ".
For all this, Otero's lawyers assured that the journalist "must have to face responsibility" and
the judicial consequences, to "stop this unjust attack"
against Otero and his tobacco company.
Video
Tabacalera Sarandí, his company, competes for first place in cigarette sales with Philip Morris and surpassed British American Tobacco Argentina in sales.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA) released a statement expressing solidarity with Sanguinetti, who
"a businessman threatened to file a civil and criminal lawsuit against him
if he did not retract and delete a publication."
In addition, Sanguinetti "reported that he has received calls from people linked to Otero
suggesting that he not insist on writing about the subject,"
the journalist organization said.
"FOPEA reiterates that threats of legal action have an inhibiting effect not only on the recipient but on journalism in general, which
deteriorates the quality of the information that society receives."
"Any citizen, but even more so political, social, union and business leaders, have the possibility of responding and clarifying whether a publication is erroneous or confusing
without having to resort to resources from other types of conflicts and outside the field of information. as a social good
," FOPEA stated in its statement.
Who is Pablo Otero
Two days after Sanguinetti's note was published on the iProfesional news portal,
Clarín
published a note on the same topic, titled
"Who is Pablo Otero, the 'Lord of Tobacco' whom Javier Milei accused and who opened an intern in La "Freedom Moves Forward."
There it was said that "its competitors claim that it is
a powerful lobbyist who evades billions of dollars"; and that
"one of his companies joined Editorial Perfil and Kuarzo as a partner on the Net TV channel" of Jorge Fontevecchia.
The tobacco industry is revolutionized by the growth of Tabacalera Sarandí,
a Buenos Aires SME owned by Argentine businessman Otero, which in the last eight years
managed to go from 5% of the market to more than 30%
, according to specialist estimates, displacing traditional international companies, thanks to the fact that they would be under-invoicing the price of their cigarette packages before the AFIP and that they obtained
judicial precautionary measures that allow them to pay less taxes
and sell their products much cheaper than their competitors. Otero also accumulated
proverbial lobbying power
, which includes a political leg, a judicial leg, and a media leg.
According to a report by the consulting firm Abeceb, from last January, this type of practices by Otero's company and other much smaller tobacco companies, but that act in the same way, allowed them to increase their participation in the cigarette market, by passing from 5.6% of the total in 2016, to 38.4% in 2023, generating
an "accumulated collection loss of US$ 5,823 million, between the years 2018 and 2023" for the national State
.
But if Otero's company pays much less in taxes, then its prices drop, revenue for the State and the provinces falls, competition becomes unbalanced and cigarette consumption increases, generating
a problem not only tax but also public health.
, since tobacco consumption kills 45,000 people per year in Argentina, 14% of the total deaths, according to a report by the UBA University Hospitals Network.
Furthermore, this tax distortion led by Tabacalera Sarandí caused that, between 2018 and 2023,
cigarette consumption had an interannual increase of 1.2% in Argentina
, while the world average decreased cigarette consumption by 2% each year, according to the Abeceb report.
To try to solve this problem, at the end of 2023 the Government proposed the need to modify the tax criteria for cigarettes,
in 10 articles of the Omnibus Law project that it sent to Congress,
raising the tax collection. But its treatment was blocked in that first parliamentary instance, with strong discussions in the tobacco chapter.
“We are not going to be accomplices to the businesses of some", such as "the Lord of Tobacco",
who "lobby and 'persuade' politicians to defend their interests," said President Javier Milei, when withdrawing the Omnibus Bill of Law. the Chamber of Deputies, when he accused “the caste” of this setback, which he identified with governors, opposition politicians and a sector of the business community.
The “Lord of Tobacco” is Pablo Otero,
according to four sources consulted by Clarín, who produces and distributes cigarettes with the Red Point, West, Kiel, Nevada, OCB and Master brands. He also sells cigars, Tuscans, cigarillos and supplies for making cigarettes.
For Otero, "the fact that the President has referred to a 'Tobacco Lord' may be related to the person who promotes the Massalin Law.
If he referred to me, it is because he does not know me
and is part of the cowardly demonization carried out by Massalin and his well-equipped journalists," said the businessman in the note published two weeks ago by
Clarín
.
In fact, this controversy in the Omnibus Law, together with
the entry of one of Otero's companies into the Net TV channel,
revealed a discussion that until now took place especially behind closed doors of the tobacco industry.
At the beginning of the year, Net TV reported that the National Communications Entity (ENaCom) approved the entry of
Grupo Madero Sur into the television channel,
making the company that owns Tabacalera Sarandí its minority shareholder, leaving 70% for Editorial. Profile, 22.5% producer Kuarzo and 7.5% for the Otero company.
In any case, Otero clarified that "we did not enter Net TV through Tabacalera Sarandí, but through another corporate entity in which we have interests in the field of entertainment and culture. The intention is to
enhance our commercial presence through various means of promotion
," he told
Clarín.
The businessman Otero is a millionaire and eccentric character, who is also a "gentleman driver", since he is
the only Latin American who races in the Porsche Mobil Supercup category
- and the oldest -, contributing from his own pocket the large costs he has. that category of motorsports.
Specialists, politicians and businessmen competing in the tobacco industry accused him of "buying precautionary measures in Justice", "associating with spies" from the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), "pressing people with lawsuits and document letters sent from the
study of Maximiliano Rusconi"
and "finance the political coffers with a part of the 500 million dollars annually saved in paying taxes," his critics assured
Clarín
.
But Otero defended himself, before Clarín:
"Tabacalera Sarandí pays US$500 million a year in various taxes, including 'ad valorem' internal taxes. Our prices have increased in line with inflation in Argentina. In 2018, we had a market share of 12%, and today we reach 33%, largely due to the decrease in purchasing power and the rise of second brands."
At a time of economic crisis like the current one, the debate on this issue is not only a question of how to help resolve the fiscal deficit, but also
a health issue, to try to avoid thousands of deaths derived from smoking,
such as breast cancer. lung and see how to reduce the number of cigarettes that Argentines smoke each year.
Argentina signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), of the World Health Organization (WHO), on September 25, 2003. But due to various interests of the industry and its lobbyists, as occurs with tax evasion , is the only country in the region that
more than 20 years after that signature was still unable to obtain legislative ratification
to begin mitigating the impact of smoking on the population.