DONOR SCANDAL

Further details continue to emerge in the scandal concerning bogus donors to the 2017 midterm election campaign of the ruling coalition in Buenos Aires province, a scandal that broke a month ago. So much so that electoral prosecutor Jorge Di Lello is now looking into possible irregularities in the 2015 campaign as well. According to political sources, there could be as many as 7,000 bogus donors across all parties in the two campaigns. It has now been confirmed that most of the 205 names in the original exposé are or were the recipients of social benefits. A further 18 are teachers recorded as having donated up to 44,000 pesos to the Let’s Change campaign but the presumed donor (a retired Lomas de Zamora teacher) said that she did not much money in the first place and would not donate it to a political party if she did. This is the first such scandal hitting Let’s Change – previous probes tended to investigate Kirchnerism, e.g. the 2007 donations allegedly from illegal ephedrine sales.