According to the
audit carried out by the government and incorporated into the judicial file investigating the insurance scandal, the Supreme Court hired the company of
Héctor Martínez Sosa
, the broker friend of the former president,
throughout Alberto Fernández's administration , as an intermediary between the
court and the Nación Seguros company. For this contract, Héctor Martínez Sosa and CIA would have received
5,027,340 pesos in commissions
between 2020 and the end of Fernández's administration
. However,
the highest court flatly denies this information
, also with official data.
The details of the commissions arise from the audit of February of this year that was incorporated into the judicial case that investigates possible crimes in the granting of contracts to intermediaries between public organizations and the Banco Nación
Nación Seguros
company , which from a Since 2020, Fernández's decree remained the only company that could provide insurance to the public sector.
That work exposed a list of 25 companies that intermediated between insurers and Nación Seguros throughout
Fernández's presidency
. The report specified that the brokers took nearly
$17 million
in commissions for intermediating between a publicly owned company and state agencies that were required to hire it anyway.
Héctor Martínez Sosa has been a friend of Alberto Fernández for decades and his wife, María Cantero, has been
the former president's private secretary
since the '90s. The judicial audit also indicates that his company was
the second most benefited
by public sector intermediation contracts and Justice believes that the broker that received the most money, Bachellier SA,
is related to him
.
Always according to the official audit, of the 19 public organizations that hired the friend of the former president of the Nation,
the Court is one of the two that paid him commissions since 2020,
that is, throughout Fernández's mandate.
The Court denies the contract
The disclosure by Clarín of the official information that is in the case caused astonishment in the Court. Sources from the highest court assured this newspaper that "property insurance (elevators, glass coverage, fire) is contracted there
directly with Nación Seguros, not through third parties or brokers,"
and they affirm that all contracting resolutions are published in the website https://www.csjn.gov.ar/decisiones/resoluciones.
"There is no contract with the indicated broker," they say.
"In the respective files, all the documentation signatures and emails are with direct representatives of Nación Seguros. The last renewal, signed last Thursday, corresponds to file 5580/2023, endorsed in resolution 687/2024," they exemplify from the fourth floor of the Court Palace, sharing access to the official document.
This is a frontal contradiction between two official sources
, also supported by official documents in both cases. Another eccentricity of the administrative management of the State that must be clarified by justice.
The criminal case
The case between Judge
Julián Ercolini and prosecutor Carlos Rívolo
investigates the alleged irregularities that occurred around Decree No. 823/2021, through which Fernández imposed the obligation on the State Public Sector to contract insurance services exclusively with the company Nación Seguros SA. They are also investigating whether this decree enabled a second step: the hiring of intermediaries who received million-dollar commissions.
In addition, it was raised in the case that Fernández's decision prohibited the possibility of holding public tenders “that promote competition and transparency around these contracts.”
The magistrate spoke in his last resolution of
a “replicated maneuver
. ”
Given this situation, it was decided to expand the research object. It was not limited to the Fernández decree (from 2021) that enabled the alleged maneuver.
The initial hypothesis maintains that the structure set up for the operations under investigation is much broader. For this reason
it was decided to extend the time window
. The initial fact of the case stipulates a temporality from 2019 to 2021.
Now, the case investigates all contracts under these characteristics that were signed with Nación Seguros SA with the use of intermediaries. This means that the time window covers the entire Fernández presidency.
This determination was made based on the audit carried out in February of this year by Nación Seguros SA. The report detected that throughout Fernández's presidency, a total of $3,213,341,098 was paid in commissions to intermediaries between the State and insurers. As some of these contracts remained in force after the arrival of Javier Milei to the Government, the payment figure updated until the report was closed reaches 3,453,302,777 pesos: about 17 million dollars.
A “great benefit”
The broker linked to Fernández received commissions for 366,635,744 pesos
from the 19 State agencies
. Among the most representative sums is the National Gendarmerie, which hired him since 2021 for a total of 254,091,184 pesos. During the same period, Corredores Viales SA hired him, paying him commissions of 30,260,148 pesos.
The National Highway Directorate, for its part, hired Héctor Martínez Sosa only during 2023, guaranteeing him a payment of 10,450,624 pesos.
The list of organizations that hired this broker is broader. It includes the Federal Police ($23,610,992), the State Mint Company ($9,412,266), and the Ministry of National Security ($5,895,230).
The Ministry of Tourism also hired Martínez Sosa, to whom it paid commissions for his intermediation for a total of 7,200,451 pesos. The Airport Security Police hired this same broker for three years for 8,359,565 pesos. The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development paid 2,535,387 pesos, a similar figure was paid by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, 2,437,703 pesos.
The rest of the organizations used the services of Martínez Sosa for smaller amounts but they complete the list that places it in second place of the five companies that received 80.56% of the total commissions paid during Fernández's presidency.