© Telam
Mauricio Macri, Patricia Bullrich, Marcos Peña, Jorge Faurie, Oscar Aguad and others are accused of the arms shipment scandal to Bolivia.
In Bolivia, there was no target practice or anything that would justify the fact that 70,000 rubber bullets left Argentina and did not return.. The information –which denies the argument with which an attempt was made to hide the lack of repressive materials that ended up in the hands of the forces that gave the coup once morest Evo Morales— arises from the statement given this Monday by three gendarmes who were in La Paz between February and June 2020. The three members of the security force were the first to testify before the economic criminal judge Alejandro Catania, who is investigating the aggravated arms smuggling during the government of Mauricio Macri.
This Monday, Catania began with the round of testimonials from gendarmes who were in the Plurinational State. Although between November 2019 and June 2020 there were three contingents of that security force, the judge chose to start with the last two to understand what the mechanics were like in Bolivia. Then he must move forward with the summonses of the members of the Alacrán Group – an elite body of the Gendarmerie – who arrived at Alto on November 13, 2019 and moved to La Paz.
Before Catania, there were Ensign Alejandro González and Sergeants Jaime Olivera and Leonardo Benítez. The three were part of the last contingent, the one that arrived in Bolivia on February 28, 2020 and had to stay until June 27 of that year because the pandemic surprised them, which made it difficult for them to return.
The members of the Gendarmerie, in general terms, reported before the judge that:
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They arrived by airliner, unlike the first contingent that traveled in a Hercules provided by the Argentine Air Force;
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They all went through Immigration;
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They traveled with their regulation weapons and civilian clothes;
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They had to do security tasks at the Argentine embassy in Bolivia and at the residence of the Argentine ambassador –the two properties are located a few blocks apart, no more than ten minutes if you walk, they said–;
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Each gendarme had a primary weapon – a shotgun – and a secondary one – a pistol;
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The weapons were delivered to the ambassador’s residence. There, boxes with weapons were kept in a small 2×2 room from where the security cameras were monitored;
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Each member of the contingent had his weapons with him;
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There was no training or shooting practice –as had already emerged in the internal summary made by the Gendarmerie–. This point is especially important because it denies the version that the chiefs of the force tried to install to justify the lack of 70,000 bullets;
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With the police and the Bolivian armed forces, they had no dealings. They only greeted each other with the police officers who were stationed in a sentry box outside the embassy or the residence;
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They returned with all the material they had;
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The return was by land, via La Quiaca.
Catania will continue with the testimonies on Wednesday. He has summonses issued until March 16, judicial sources entrusted to Page 12.
The lawyers of the former Minister of Security were present in the statements on Monday Patricia Bullrichof the ex-commander of the Gendarmerie Gerard Otero, of the former head of Grupo Alacrán Fabian Salas and the ex-attached in La Paz Adolfo Calibaamong others. Macri, through his lawyer Pablo Lanusse, had initially tried to prevent the gendarmes from testifying in the internal summary. The argument of the defense of the former president was that, being a procedure of the force, there was no way to control it. Now that they testify before the judge, it seems that Macri is no longer interested in having his lawyers present.
The scandal over the shipment of arms to Bolivia to support the coup once morest Morales broke out last July, when a letter dated November 13, 2019 was found in which the then head of the Bolivian Air Force (FAB), Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara, thanked the Argentine ambassador Normando Álvarez García for the delivery of 40,000 anti-riot bullets 12/70. At that time, the government of Alberto Fernández – through Martín Soria (Justice), Sabina Frederic (Security) and Mercedes Marcó del Pont (AFIP) – denounced Macri for smuggling. A few days later, the Bolivian Police announced that they had found 29,600 bullets of the same type with the logo of Fabricaciones Militares in a warehouse. The cartridges had also entered the warehouse on November 13, 2019, that is, the same day that the Argentine gendarmes arrived in La Paz.
The bullets delivered to the coup forces in Bolivia had been bought by Bullrich for the G-20 summit, which was held in Argentina at the end of 2018. Initially, the scorpions were not going to carry those cartridges, but authorization was requested from the National Agency for Controlled Materials (ANMaC) to transfer them to La Paz following a meeting that took place on November 12, 2019 at the Casa Rosada. That was the repressive material that did not return to the country; the rest returned.
In the file for smuggling to Bolivia, not only are Macri and Bullrich charged, but they are also accompanied by the senior staff of Cambiemos: the former chief of staff Mark Penathe former chancellor Jorge Faurieformer defense minister Oscar Aguadthe former Secretary of Strategic Affairs Fulvio Pompeo and former ambassador Álvarez García, among others.