2023-12-01 20:22:00
(CNN Spanish) — He strongly criticized him and accused him of having squandered more than US$15 billion of Central Bank reserves when he was at the head of the monetary authority during the Government of Mauricio Macri to avoid a devaluation of the peso. But now, the elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, confirmed that Luis Caputo, who was also Minister of Finance in Macri’s Government, will be his Minister of Economy.
Caputo, who was part of Milei’s delegation on his trip this week to the United States, was already considered a candidate to occupy that position, but so far there was no confirmation from the president-elect, which occurred this Wednesday, after return to Buenos Aires, in interviews with local radio stations.
Milei defended Caputo’s appointment by maintaining that, for him, the main problem to be solved is the large amount of Leliq issued, the Liquidity Letters, an instrument with which the Central Bank, in exchange for high interest rates, seeks to withdraw money from the economy to contain the demand for dollars and inflation. “It is essential to solve this problem with a lot of expertise because, if not, we end up in hyperinflation,” he said in defense of Caputo, whom he curiously accused some time ago of having left “this despiole of the Leliqs.”
Who is Luis Caputo?
Caputo is an economist and became known to Argentines in 2015, when he joined Macri’s government, who came to classify him as “the Messi of finance.” He first took over as Secretary of Finance, then in 2017 as Minister of Finance and in 2018 He would become president of the Central Bank, where he lasted just over three months, and was then replaced by Guido Sandleris.
He is the first cousin of Nicolás Caputo, a renowned construction businessman and one of the former president’s best friends. Like Macri, Caputo studied at Colegio Cardenal Newman, an elite Catholic primary and secondary school, all for boys. Later, he received a degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires and before his appointment as a public official, he had an extensive career in the private financial sector.
He worked in New York and London for Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan as head of Emerging Markets and, subsequently, from 2008 he served as president of Deutsche Bank in Argentina. In addition, until 2015 he worked as a Finance professor at the Universidad Católica Argentina.
But his resume also includes some controversies: in 2017 he was mentioned in the journalistic investigation of the so-called Paradise Papers as a shareholder in offshore companies, created to manage dollars in tax havens, something he did not mention when he took office as a public official. However, when this investigation was made known, Caputo maintained that he had not been an owner or shareholder of those companies, but rather an advisor, administrator, fiduciary and/or manager, which is why he was not obliged to report it and that since his entry into The civil service in 2015 had stopped providing professional services for those firms.
During his management he was in charge of the negotiation with the so-called “vulture funds”, where Argentina agreed to pay US$ 9,352 million to the main creditors. Also as minister, Caputo issued a 100-year bond for an amount of US$ 2,750 million with an interest coupon of 7.125% and a yield of 7.9%, a measure celebrated by the Macrista government and criticized by Kirchnerism.
In June 2018, in the midst of a financial crisis, Caputo arrived at the Central Bank to replace Federico Sturzenegger, although he lasted just over three months at the monetary authority. On September 25 he resigned.
However, during that period, the Macri Government decided that Argentina, 12 years after having settled its debt with the International Monetary Fund, went back into debt with the international organization with the largest contingent loan in the history of the IMF: US$ 45,000 million. , the credit with which the country currently deals.
Due to this agreement there were several legal complaints against Macri and officials of his Government. Caputo is one of the defendants in a criminal case led by Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti and prosecutor Franco Picard that includes a criminal complaint filed by the government of Alberto Fernández in 2021 through the Anti-Corruption Office (OA).
The alleged crimes reported in the case against Macri, Caputo, and other officials are “fraud due to unfaithful administration aggravated by being committed to the detriment of the public administration and embezzlement of public funds.”
According to the OA presentation, the loan with the IMF was “intended to finance the formation of external assets, to the detriment of the Argentine State and all the people of the Nation, who with the debt subsidized the profits of the speculators due to the decision of those reported.” That is, they accuse them that the credit money fled abroad through the payment of debt to private individuals.
Macri and his economic team, which includes Caputo, have always rejected the accusations against them and so far have not been summoned by Justice to testify on the matter.
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