Federal judge María Eugenia Capuchetti ordered a battery of test measures aimed at identifying the main operators of the foreign exchange market at the time of accreditation of the loan acquired with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the government of Mauricio Macri, judicial sources reported. .
The magistrate ordered it within the framework of the case in which it is investigated whether former President Macri and other officials of his government committed fraud against the State coffers when they promoted the country’s indebtedness with the IMF.
Among the main measures, the judge asked the Central Bank (BCRA) to identify the companies that made the largest net foreign currency transfers abroad in the investigated period, as well as the individuals who carried out operations for 40.5 million dollars or higher.
From the court, the BCRA was asked for a “comprehensive report linked to the document of the Exchange Market, Debt and Formation of Foreign Assets 2015-2019”, judicial sources explained to Télam who indicated that these are measures aimed at identifying the main operators of the market in order to establish who benefited from the indebtedness.
Among the measures ordered, the judge asked the BCRA to identify the 100 agents who made net purchases of more than 24,679 million dollars between December 2015 and October 2019 and the 10 buyers of more than 7,945 million dollars in the same period.
At the request of prosecutor Franco Picardi, the order was also reiterated to the BCRA to prepare a report detailing the amount, evolution and composition of the international reserves existing in that entity between December 2015 and 2019 and indicating how the Variation/evolution operated in international reserves after crediting of the loan.
On the other hand, a request was reiterated to the Caja de Valores SA to report who subscribed Lebacs debt securities between 2015 and 2019 and who disarmed those positions in pesos between January 2018 and December 2019, another measure that aims to rebuild the movements in the stock and currency markets from the loan that the IMF gave to Argentina during the Macri government.
The complaint that gave rise to this investigation had been filed by the head of the OA, Félix Crous, before federal court number 5 and argued that through the violation of a series of regulations, the Macri government had contracted a millionaire debt with the IMF whose amount, moreover, was identical to the amount in dollars that would have escaped in the same period of time.
Among the defendants are former President Macri, his former ministers Nicolás Dujovne (Treasury), Luis Caputo (Finance) and the former heads of the Central Bank Adolfo Sturzenegger and Guido Sandleris.
From the complaint it emerged that the conduct imputed to the defendants was deployed in the context of an economic, monetary and financial policy that allowed “extraordinary profits to be generated through the placement of short-maturity bills in national currency, which paid a very high rate of interest”.
In the presentation of the criminal complaint, it was highlighted that already at the beginning of 2018, and as a consequence of the over-indebtedness -the largest in international markets since 2016-, Argentina “lost private international financing in dollars, at the same time that speculative investors disarmed their positions in bills in pesos and dollarized their holdings to ensure their profits in the face of the debacle, through the formation of foreign assets”.
