The former president said he was pressured to release payments to Madres despite irregularities detected in the works.
The case investigates an alleged fraudulent administration scheme between 2008 and 2011 through the social housing program Shared Dreams. Among the defendants are the brothers Sergio and Pablo Schoklender, together with former Kirchnerism officials who held key positions in the management of public works
Mauricio Macri testified this Wednesday in the trial for Shared Dreams and pointed directly against Kirchnerism. Before the Federal Oral Court No. 5, he assured that Alberto Fernández pressured him to authorize payments to the Mothers Foundation of Plaza de Mayo, even though there were already serious irregularities in the execution of the works
.As he said, at the beginning of his administration, he received warnings from his then minister Esteban Bullrich about inconsistencies in the certificates. In this context, he argued that the foundation had charged more than twice what it had actually been executed, which motivated the decision to stop new payments under these
conditions.
Macri also noted that working with the foundation headed by the late Hebe de Bonafini was “traumatic”, although he admitted that due to the passage of time he could not remember all the details. Even so, his testimony reinforced one of the central axes of the judicial process: the existence of political pressure to sustain the flow of funds despite the irregularities detected
In this context, former Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido, former Secretary of Public Works José López —who has already been convicted in other cases of corruption—, in addition to Abel Fatala and Luis Bontempo, are also accused. All of them were part of the state structure that should control the allocation and execution of funds, which reinforces the hypothesis of a scheme supported by different levels of
political power.
According to the prosecution, more than 700 million pesos were transferred for the execution of the projects, and a significant part of those funds would have been diverted. The amount questioned exceeds 23% of the total, which accounts for the magnitude of the alleged damage to the
State.In previous hearings, Sergio Schoklender also took aim at Bonafini and argued that housing resources ended up being used for political purposes. This context, added to what Macri said, once again exposes a pattern of discretionary management of public funds in the name of social programs
during Kirchnerism.
