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Argentine Official Charged With Bribery Argentina’s Vice President Charged in Corruption Case
(about 4 hours later)
BUENOS AIRES — An Argentine judge has charged Vice President Amado Boudou with bribery and conducting business incompatible with public office in the acquisition of the company that prints the country’s currency and of later benefiting from government contracts. BUENOS AIRES — Vice President Amado Boudou of Argentina has been charged in a corruption case in which he is accused of abusing his power to gain control of a company that has printed the nation’s currency, a development that has shaken the government here.
Mr. Boudou is accused of using shell companies and secret middlemen to gain control of the company that was given contracts to print the Argentine peso and campaign material for the ticket he shared with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. On Friday, Mr. Boudou was charged with receiving bribes and conducting business incompatible with public office. If convicted, Mr. Boudou could face up to six years in prison.
The decision by the federal judge, Ariel Lijo, was published Friday night on the Justice Department’s website. The judge also ordered an embargo on $25,000 worth of Mr. Boudou’s property. He will remain free while he awaits a trial in the case along with five other defendants. Mr. Boudou, 51, who is in Cuba on an official trip, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. He has said that news media organizations with which the government has long been at odds, especially the Clarín group, have conspired against him.
Mr. Boudou is the first sitting Argentine vice president to face such charges. If convicted, he could be sentenced to one to six years in prison and be barred for life from elective office. In remarks to a radio station, one of Mr. Boudou’s lawyers compared the 330-page document detailing the charges, published late Friday by a federal judge, Ariel Lijo, to “a fairy tale told in a fantastical way for the news media to replicate.” He said Mr. Boudou would appeal the charges.
Mr. Boudou, who was on an official trip to Cuba, has said he is innocent despite evidence linking him to other defendants that was made public by investigative journalists in Argentina. Mr. Boudou has also sought to raise doubts about the impartiality of Judge Lijo. Before a hearing this month, he said Judge Lijo “liked to handle his affairs in the darkness of his office” and accused him of acting like a puppet for Clarín, which publishes the country’s largest newspaper.
Many Argentines have asked why Mrs. Kirchner has remained loyal to Mr. Boudou when the allegations have made him Argentina’s least popular politician. Opponents are threatening to impeach him, and some allies say he should resign. His falling fortunes have left the government without a clear presidential successor ahead of the 2015 elections. Mrs. Kirchner has yet to speak publicly about the case. The charges against Mr. Boudou date to 2010, when he was economy minister. He is accused of taking steps to illegally revive a bankrupt printing company and using a frontman to buy shares in the company, now called Compañia de Valores Sudamericana.
According to the judge’s investigation, Mr. Boudou — as economy minister and then vice president — acted to smooth the Ciccone Calcográfica printing company’s exit from bankruptcy and engineer its purchase by a shell company so he and other secret partners could benefit from unusual tax exemptions and lucrative government contracts. The company has printed Argentina’s bank notes and made fliers for the re-election campaign of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2011. Amid the corruption claims, the company was nationalized in 2012.
The shell company, the Old Fund, was led by a businessman, Alejandro Vandenbroele, who is accused of secretly representing Mr. Boudou in business deals. The scandal broke open after Mr. Vandenbroele’s former wife spoke about what she said was the business arrangement, saying she had to give interviews because her life was being threatened over what she knew. Five other people, including Alejandro Vandenbroele, the businessman accused of being Mr. Boudou’s frontman, have also been charged. News reports have described ties between the two men, but Mr. Boudou denies knowing Mr. Vandenbroele.
Also charged Friday were José María Núñez Carmona, Mr. Boudou’s friend and business partner; Mr. Vandenbroele; Rafael Resnick Brenner, a former tax agency official; Nicolas Ciccone, a founder of the printing company; and his son-in-law, Guillermo Reinwick. Mr. Boudou was appointed economy minister in 2009, serving in the post for more than two years. In 2011, Mrs. Kirchner chose him as her running mate.
The Ciccones have said Mr. Boudou was personally involved in the negotiations that persuaded them to sell 70 percent of the family company to the Old Fund. He was once considered to be her likely successor, but the scandal has shattered his image. Term limits bar Mrs. Kirchner from running again next year.
Mr. Boudou has not denied signing a decree as economy minister that effectively erased the printer’s debts by enabling the new owners to pay back taxes over many years at below-market interest rates. Some members of the opposition are now threatening to try to impeach Mr. Boudou. Others are calling for him to step down temporarily. Mr. Boudou is the first sitting vice president here to face corruption charges, according to the local news media. He will remain free while he awaits trial.
Concerns about corruption have troubled Argentines during the governments of Mrs. Kirchner and Néstor Kirchner, her husband and predecessor. One economy minister under Mr. Kirchner was sentenced to four years in prison in 2012 after a large amount of cash was found in her office bathroom. She has appealed her sentence.