Tension around the Buenos Aires’ spying scandal is growing as more people come forward with evidence that Mauricio Macri, the capital’s mayor, was in fact the man giving the orders to the now-imprisoned alleged spy, Gerado Ciro James.
James, a former member of the federal police, with close links to Macri, has been arrested for tapping various phone conversations, including some in the city’s ministry of education, Carlos Avila, a candidate for the River Plate football club’s administration, and also that of Sergio Burstein. Burstein is the head of association for victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing, an attack on the Jewish community that left 85 dead and 300 wounded.
In the case of Burstein’s phone, James would have operated under the Misiones police’s orders, who suspected Burstein in a murder case. Burstein had clashed with the city government over Macri’s plans to create a Metropolitan Police force, having spoken out against it and the planned force’s former head, Jorge Palacios. Macri is also convinced that the government is trying to affect his chances to get to the Casa Rosada in 2011.
In what many are claiming is a plan to dissolve the city government of all responsibility for James’ actions, Guillermo Montenegro, the justice minister in the city’s government, affirmed that a spying network “doesn’t exist and has never existed” in the city and said that James worked for the Education Ministry, who were oblivious to his side job at the Federal Police. Montenegro explained he only knew James was planning to enter the Metropolitan Police, a new police force exclusive to the capital. He continued saying “he never told us he worked in education and never told them he was in the federal police.”
Burstein gives another point of view in an interview with daily newspaper, claiming it to be impossible that Mariano Narodowski, the education minister, had no idea of James’ occupations, as he is claiming. According to Burstein, despite James being paid $6,000 a month, the minister has claimed he “could not name a task that had been assigned to James.”
Boca Connection
Meanwhile Montenegro has also denied James had worked in the Boca Junior Club security service during Macri’s presidency.
But the publication of a picture showing James in the Boca Juniors stadium wearing a police jacket and “controlling” Roberto Digón, ex-vice-president of football club made it tough for Macri to defend his theory.
At the time of the photograph, the mayor was president of the football club, and most of the politicians involved in the spying scandal were part of Boca’s administration. This includes Andrés Ibarra, current education undersecretary, and the minister of justice, Montenegro himself. Both politicians are still claiming not knowing anything about James existence, but the picture proves they had to be aware of his actions. They were later betrayed by Palacios, former head of the Metropolitan Police, when he told daily newspaper La Nación that he recommended James to Osvaldo Chamorro, his successor at the head of the institution.
Intelligence allegations
Meanwhile Néstor Valleca, the federal police chief, has acknowledged that James worked for the police in the Misiones region where he was an “intelligence assistant, which has nothing to do with what is seen on the street.”
However, Valleca also recognised James “should have been obliged to claim his other occupations and it should have been taken under account in his admission.” Argentina intelligence service (SIDE) is the only institution to be allowed to listen to phone lines. Vallecca defends the police saying “they don’t tape phone lines…In legal cases, the only accredited organism is SIDE.”
Vallecca’s allegations brought satisfaction into Macri’s party, PRO. The party leaders came up with the hypothesis of the existence of “a political operation” to prevent to launch of the Metropolitan Police.
Anibal Fernández, the nation’s cabinet chief, has blamed Macri for the whole story, saying “Macri is responsible for the Macri-Gate” comparing it with the Watergate scandal of 1974. “The scheme of the Metropolitan Police has been conceived like a parallel SIDE,” he added, accusing Macri and Palacios of starting a new police force with intelligence capacities. Fernández added that “an important person has not been mentioned in the story,” meaning Montenegro’s right arm, Matías Molinero, who is directly linked to the Metropolitan Police.