When Sunday night fell in Buenos Aires and the news were echoed from the little flattering surveys for the ruling in Argentina in the legislative elections, José Luis Espert, the star candidate of Freedom Avanza (LLA) for this important election date, chose X to put an end to his candidacy. “For Argentina, I take a step to the side,” wrote the liberal economist who for years was the ideological mirror of Javier Milei and, until a week ago, the star candidate of the Ultra formation in a few elections in which the ultras are played a lot. The renunciation of sister is not less: the guru that helped mold Milei’s economic creed leaves for the scandal that is mixed jets private and stained dollars.
The scandal, in addition to the name of the economist José Luis Espert, had a clear protagonist: Federico ‘Fred’ Machadoan Argentine businessman accused in the United States of being part of an international drug trafficking network. As some Argentine media echoed, from an open cause in Texas against the American Debra Mercer-Erwin and the aforementioned entrepreneur (both investigated for drug trafficking and money laundering), a Guatemalan company linked to Machado Transfer $ 200,000 in 2020 to José Luis Espertthe former candidate of Libertad advances. As explained by Milei’s economic guru a few weeks ago, the payment corresponded to a consulting work. For the opposition, on the other hand, it was the centerpiece of a more murky plot.
The first to move to sign, judicially speaking, was the Peronist Juan recordois, who last Monday filed a complaint against the Ultra candidate for alleged money laundering, accusing him of having received funds from a business environment investigated by drug trafficking and fraud. José Luis Espert, far from hiding, admitted the transaction and defended himself ensuring that “everything was lawful.” “I could have sinned as a naive, but ever a criminal,” he said in a video broadcast at the beginning of the month, with which he tried to give a folder to a case that had already exploded in the media.
The money that reappeared five years later
However, the attempt of the Libertad candidate advances to stop the scandal lasted rather little. With the passing of the days, the story became tangled and the ties of sister with Machado again occupied press holders. In 2019, Machado offered him his private plane to travel to Viedma, in the Argentine Patagonia, where the economist presented his book The complicit society. As expert would count, that meeting marked the beginning of a cordial relationship that, only one year later, was offered with the signing of a contract with the Guatemalan company PEOPLE MINESrelated to the surroundings of Machado, of which he charged $ 200,000 for his work as a consultant. It has been following the open investigation against the Argentine businessman for a cause linked to drug trafficking and fraud in operations of sale of airplanes – which keeps it on house arrest since 2021 – when he transcended both the contract and the payment to the guru that helped build the economic discourse of the president of Argentina.
For Javier Milei, the Espert scandal would soon become one more stone in the shoe and no, precisely a China. At first, the Argentine president tried to subtract all possible importance. “Chimento [cotilleo en argentino] Of hairdressing, ”he said during a television interview, but the storm quickly became temporary and the leader of La Libertad advances, accustomed to capitalizing the controversies, this time did not find a profitable angle. Everything, with the legislative elections increasingly closest.
Until two days ago, Espert was still standing as a candidate, convinced that resisting was showing strength. “This is a dirty operation,” he denounced before, as he almost always happens in Argentine politics, he renounced his political aspirations, assuming that “time will demonstrate that all this was a great lie,” Espert wrote in a final message in a liberal martyr tone, in which he assures that he will give the explanations “where it corresponds.” Also in ‘X, Javier Milei responded to the resignation instantly, with a mixture of support and distance: “Argentina is always above people.”
A campaign that bleeds in surveys
Javier Milei and José Luis Espert in a joint act of freedom advances in Buenos Aires, months before the scandal that has shaken the ruling campaign.
But by then. According to a survey published on October 4, 76% of Argentines considered that the case had a negative impact on the government and almost 70% saw the defense of sister as “unbelievable.” The numbers were so devastating, that Milei’s negative image rose to 63.2% and more than half of the country believed that it would lose the legislative of October 26.
For Milei, losing his main candidate in the key province for the elections, is a hard blow that arrives at the moment when the Argentine president needs to reinforce his majority in Congress to be able to boost the province of Buenos Aires, he concentrates almost half of the Argentine electorate and that is where any electoral appointment in Argentina is defined.
The Espert scandal, in addition, revives a past that Milei has always preferred to keep in the trunk of memories. Precisely because in 2019, when José Luis Espert was the candidate for the presidency of his political space – then called Frente Awaken – failed to justify before the electoral justice the origin of the campaign funds. At that time, Machado already appeared as one of his logistics support, since he left him his plane and financed certain acts. The coincidences do not end there because Machado’s lawyer, the businessman today in house prison, is Francisco Oneto, the same one that represents Milei in other causes. Argentina is a country with few degrees of separation.
Meanwhile, the ruling tries to rebuild his speech. From the Casa Rosada they insist that the SECT case “will not affect the electoral strategy”, although they recognize, in private, that the damage is already done. Three weeks after the elections, the government frees a double battle: the economic one, with an interannual inflation remains above 180%, and the symbolic, demonstrating that the “change” is not made of the same materials.
