Leaks, leaks and more leaks: the D’alessandro affair
The continued leaks of private messages taken from Buenos Aires City Security Minister Marcelo D’alessandro continue to send shockwaves through the political ecosystem. The situation is such that D’alessandro, a hardliner who vowed to fight back, has asked for temporary leave in order to regroup, while accusing the Kirchnerists of being behind the leaks. Of course they are the most benefited from it, but they struck back claiming they are part of an internal struggle between opposing factions of Mauricio Macri’s Pro party, where D’alessandro’s boss—mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta—is in a multi-front battle against the “hawks”—headed by Patricia Bullrich—in order to secure the
2023 presidential ticket and key control over jurisdictions like the all-important City of Buenos Aires. President Alberto Fernández, a selfproclaimed “man of justice” jumped on the hacks to promote the impeachment trial against the Supreme Court, with which he is going to war to the point of rejecting a ruling that forces him to fork over federal funds to the City of Buenos Aires, probably at the behest of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is probably silently laughing in a corner somewhere as she apparently plays everyone like a fiddle.
The first set of leaks made up the “Lago Escondido” saga in which D’alessandro accompanied a series of judges and other magistrates, a spy, a media executive and first-line directors of Argentina’s largest media conglomerate, Clarín—which has a deep animosity against Kirchnerism—, to a retreat in the private lakeside mansion of billionaire Joe Lewis, a close friend of Macri. At that point D’alessandro argued the leaked messages were fake, but had filed a complaint admitting his phone had been hacked. There appeared to be no real damage beyond an apparent conflict of interest and the (minor) attempted crime of covering up the invitation by faking invoices. These are some of the most important judges in Argentina, colluding with Rodríguez Larreta’s Security Minister and Grupo Clarín’s Jorge Rendo (CEO) and Pablo Casey (general counsel and Héctor Magnetto’s nephew), which meant it was a gold mine for the Kirchnerists at a time when they really needed to score some points given Mrs. Fernández de Kirchner’s guilty verdict in the “public works” corruption case and a couple of unfavorable Supreme Court rulings. As mentioned at the time, there are no coincidences in the Hidden Lake.
A second set of leaks was much more damaging to D’A lessandro and, ultimately, his boss Rodríguez Larreta. They revealed a series of text message conversations with five people, all of them top-level members of the judiciary, and the second in command of Argentina’s spy agency, Silvia Majdalani. Silvio Robles, right-hand man to Supreme Court Chief Justice Horacio Rosatti, allegedly sent D’alessadro legal advice regarding a case his boss would be ruling on—on the makeup of the Magistrates’ Council—. Marcelo Violante, a businessman with the two truck concession in the City, exchanged messages with the Minister where he mentions thousands of dollars and pesos in envelopes, while asking him to intercede in legal situations and asking for favours to win public tenders. One of the accounts is identified only with a first name, Augusto, who is believed to be prosecutor Troncoso, and with whom D’alessandro discusses how to influence certain legal proceedings. And a “deleted account” apparently belonged to prosecutor Juan Ignacio “Nacho” Bidone, with whom they exchange intelligence information. The messages include voicenotes, pictures and stickers.
Corralled in a corner, Rodríguez Larreta gave D’alessandro’s head on a silver platter to the ruling coalition, and his internal adversaries who took the opportunity to call him out for not standing by his man. Both of them said the content of the private conversations was part of an illegal espionage operation backed by Kirchnerists, and that the content of the messages was fake or modified.
Then came the counteroffensive, with a group of congressmen led by Cristian Ritondo, a former Security Minister of the Province of Buenos Aires, asking AFI spy chief Agustín Rossi for information regarding undercover espionage operations led by former members of the Armed Forces tied to the toxic César Milani, former head of the Army under Mrs. Fernández de Kirchner and reputed to have been her information-gatherer. The confidential response was then leaked to Clarín and La
Nación, where it was also revealed that apparently the hacks had originated from an undercover AFI base in Eldorado in the tropical province of Misiones, a stones throw away from Paraguay’s infamous Ciudad del Este. Another version suggested the hacking originated in Paraguay using Israeli intelligence software Pegasus, which would mean the trove of information could be substantially larger. It is important to note that when D’alessandro originally filed the legal complaint regarding his phone being hacked he did it in tandem with Diego Santilli, another former Security Minister and current deputy for the Province of Buenos Aires with governorship aspirations.
Rossi counterattacked by filing a criminal complaint against journalists Joaquín Morales Solá (La Nación) and Daniel Santoro (Clarín) and their respective outlets for violating the secrecy clauses regarding the identity of spies. That is the same accusation this publishing house received from Oscar Parrilli back in 2015 when he was spy chief and Noticias reporter Rodis Recalt published a list of spies the Férnandez de Kirchner administration hired, showing it was a hotbed for Kirchnerist militants.
The final leak, for the time being, is a list of D’alessandro’s “close contacts” that includes several former spies (Majdalani, Juan Sebastián de Stefano, Leonardo Bergroth with whom he travelled to Lago Escondido), federal judge Julián Ercolini (another Lago Escondido traveller), federal prosecutor Carlos Rívolo, and casino strongman Daniel “Tano” Angelici’s private secretary, among others. The collateral damage will continue to harm Rodríguez Larreta and his team, and there could be more coming both from D’alessandro’s phone and potentially Santilli.
At the end of the day these leaks clearly demonstrate that in the Argentine political arena anything goes. Illicit espionage was a cornerstone of the Fernández de Kirchner administrations. It was also a favourite for Mauricio Macri and his teams. Now, technology makes it even easier to gain access to large troves of information meaning everyone is potentially much more exposed than in the past. Don’t expect this to be the end of it.
At the end of the day these leaks clearly demonstrate that in the Argentine political arena anything goes.