2023-11-08 03:30:00
Just yesterday, the presidential candidate Sergio Massa was passing through Córdoba and Santa Fe in a hurried electoral campaign. Then we learned of his late praise for “Cooperativism”. In fact, just a year ago his ‘facts’ contradicted such “praises”; specifically with respect to Sancor Cul, the first dairy cooperative or flagship of rural cooperatives.
In the midst of an acute Argentine crisis, once once more denying a harsh reality of inflation, exchange rates, fuels, etc. between this Massa government and the Atilra union, they delay without a deadline an elementary and urgent mandatory conciliation between that union association and Sancor, causing with extortionate blockades the criminal waste of hundreds of thousands of liters of milk, with the certain and implicit threat of thousands of cooperative jobs.
We who have followed the conflict closely, remember that, indeed, on November 2, 2022 – day of the dead -, Minister Sergio Massa called a meeting in which, according to reports, they evaluated alternatives to oxygenate the former leader. national dairy company, but without going to the bottom of the deficient business-union dilemma.
Demanding the payment of a million-dollar debt in dollars to Venezuela and the management of refinancing due to tax evasion before AFIP or others, were the aspects in question. Mere placebos that are in no way enough to rescue the company from the unfathomable abyss into which this national government plunged it (through the National Institute of Associations and Social Economy, INAES), the Cooperative itself and the sector’s union, with their inefficiencies, abuses and irresponsible omissions.
Legally having as many authentic cooperative resources as possible, such as the permanent power to genuinely increase its capital, the issuance of negotiable obligations, associate with people of another legal nature and/or form export cooperatives; Everything concerning a never-concretized ‘saving’ trust (state or mixed?) is neither a cooperative nor sustainable solution in legal terms.
According to the cooperative nature itself, national or international investors naturally imbued with all mercantilism are inadmissible; true antonym of the cooperative spirit of Non-intermediary, Non-profit. Much less, the interference of the state financial sector, which would actually and technically be insolvent according to its own organic charter.
The disaster of Sancor
Ergo, if the members themselves, the sole owners of SanCor, do not trust their cooperative by refusing to recapitalize it from their own pockets, why should they, or the State itself, do so?
Sancor cannot overcome a crisis that already generated losses of just under 2.5 billion pesos in 2016.
So then, and despite it to us, the legal hypothesis of formalizing its own bankruptcy is strengthened when additionally, according to our current cooperative law, there is no legal possibility of transforming Sancor into a commercial company or civil association, nor the possibility of selling part of it. nor entirely the same to third parties, (arts. 6, 24 and cc., Decree-Law 20,337/73 – Cooperatives).
Thus, and as we timely pointed out, Sancor’s disaster is much greater and worse than overcoming in cooperative terms and category the last and irrecoverable five-year crisis – managerial, associative, productive, economic, financial and union – that has dismantled a solidarity company. leaving her in the embers of the final shot.
The Sancor cooperative was dismembered and collapsed due to terrible administrations, bureaucracies, acts that were notoriously foreign to its statutory purpose and to cooperativism itself; participatory mediatizations, lack of sufficient guarantees and secure cooperative channels in its politicized ties with Venezuela, etc.
All this without prejudice to flagrant and repeated omissions and breaches of the duties of public officials by the INAES, as well as alleged corruption and illicit enrichment of directors, managers, trustees, auditors, advisors, union members, etc.; who should be investigated in the event of a judicial declaration of bankruptcy, when those who in recent decades formed their boards of directors, their syndicates, etc. would be summoned.
Would the directors of Mutual Sancor, those of Sancor Seguros, of Sancor Salud, with origins in the same Santa Fe city of Sunchales and identical corporate name, also be involved, in the end, progeny achievable by an extension of the bankruptcy in an eventual definitive bankruptcy process of the parent dairy cooperative?
The suspicions
All of this causes us to be suspicious and indignant that INAES never declared the acts of SanCor Cul irregular and ineffective, for administrative purposes. (balance sheets, reports from trustees, auditors, the Central Bank, Afip, Anses, etc.) that were submitted to it with high periodic frequency in the last 20 years, as long as they were contrary to the law, the statute, regulations, etc.
Such a possible declaration of irregularity might, as a precaution, involve the requirement of prudent and judicious legally provided measures.
That is, to request, in a timely manner, the judicial intervention of the Cooperative, without prejudice to analyzing and promoting, where appropriate, the recovery of the Sancor company by its own personnel, genuinely expanding, enriching and recategorizing the aforementioned movement of recovered companies. Paradoxically, promoted and supported politically and clientelly, with all boldness, by this national and popular government. Even today with a special linkage unit in INAES itself.
* Master in Cooperative Law, Coneau.
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