In recent days, an impressive filtration of 11.5 million documents has been published by 107 newspapers, in which 140 politicians and businessmen linked to money laundering and concealment-of-fund operations appear. Macri is one of those who top the list.
By PSTU (A)
Macri up to his neck
The “Panama Gate” documents or “Panama Papers” (as the press has been calling them), that have been extracted from a leak in Mossak Fonseca’s database, connect Macri (along with his brother and his father, Franco) to “Fleg Trading Ltd” company, incorporated in Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved in January 2009. In addition, he is also linked to the “Kagemusha” company, based in Panama and founded in 1981.
What is the problem? He has never reported any of them, or the profits earned. The last straw was that he had been former director of both companies. Along with President Macri are Nestor Kirchner’s former secretary, Russian President Putin, relatives of Syria’s dictator Al Assad, the King of Saudi Arabia, Ukraine’s President and the former Prime Minister. Macri appears among hundreds of politicians and businessmen from 200 countries. 10 major banks such as HSBC, Credit Suisse and UBS, are also involved in generating offshore companies for those operations.
A family history
His father Franco Macri, who is also linked to the corruption scandal, is a renowned millionaire businessman. What is not said is that those millions he has made for years, and which he used to pay part of his son’s presidential campaign, were based on exploitation, fraud and business with mass murderers.
Franco Macri went from owning 7 to 46 companies, during the genocidal military dictatorship of 76. While the dictatorship persecuted and killed thousands of workers, and threatened thousands of others saying the same would happen to them if they mobilized, Macri was doing business.
He also had an “unlimited checkbook”. He spent millions of dollars and we’ve had to pay for it. His companies’ million-dollar debt (including SEVEL) was absorbed by the State, as ordered by the dictatorship and then by Cavallo. Today we are still paying for Macri’s scams with the dictatorship, holding workers at gunpoint.
Capitalist “business”
The hundreds of cases exposed by the investigation are a scandal of historical proportions, but they are only the tip of an iceberg that is beginning to surface.
Brazil is shaken by a deep political crisis, which partly has at its center a corruption scandal, with funds and contracts from Petrobras and Odebrecht. The scandal involves the PT government, with Dilma and Lula on top, along with all the bosses’ opposition parties, such as PSDB and PMDB. Even the PSOL, who claims to be left wing, is on the construction company’s list.
Our country has an extensive background. From Menem and the arms sales to Ecuador in the 90s, to Nestor’s scandal with Skanska. Cristina herself is implicated in corruption cases, such as Hotesur, among others. Now the “Cambiemos” government, in a clear “backlash” maneuver, rushes the judicial process and arrests Lazaro Baez, the Kirchners’ businessman friend, who became rich through contracts with the State and money laundering. Why wasn’t it done before? They dig their own graves. All involved in corruption or fraud cases must pay!
The scandal of the fraudulent and illegitimate foreign debt is probably the most outrageous in our country. Millions of dollars of private debt that became State debt (our debt!) making businessmen and foreign vultures rich. While we workers are laid off to pay for the economic crisis, they get rich with fraud. They hire us “under the table” or in precarious conditions and charge us a “wage tax” if we earn a little more. They implement fee hikes in services and transportation and set caps to pay parity, giving us miserable raises, much lower than the cost of living. They have no shame!
Let’s mobilize against foreign and local vultures
The worst of all is that they want us to be satisfied with a shameful explanation, or simply try to make us look the other way. “Incorporating a company in a tax haven is not a crime”, says Laura Alonso, who controls the “anti-corruption office.” “He was just the director, he had nothing to do with it”, says president spokesman Ivan Pavlovsky. Even Daniel Scioli, who topped the Kirchnerism list, said he believes in the explanations Macri gave… they’re pulling our legs!
We who work know what it is to earn a salary every month sweating blood, enduring brutal production speed, commuting for hours at dawn and arriving home dead-tired at night. They, the business owners, our bosses, those who govern us, have their pockets full and don’t know what work is. We have to stop them. We cannot let the external debt and local vultures steal from us. They are parasites that live at the expense of scams and the work of others.
In Iceland the government fell before a mass mobilization that took the streets. The solution cannot be leaving the “case” in the hands of the “anti-corruption office”, controlled by “Cambiemos” officials, as proposed by Michetti; or demanding that Macri give explanations in Congress, as some leftist parties agitate. Congress is another cave of outlaws, who has just voted to indebt us even more.
We must mobilize to demand a true investigation. We cannot trust in the “justice” that puts the poor in jail and absolves businessmen, or in “bodies” run by these same people. We must demand that the investigation be carried out by a commission that is independent of the bosses’ parties and businessmen, composed of workers’ social and popular organizations. Only if we take the streets and mobilize we will be able to cut off the cash flow from the scams they make at our expense.
All the implicated must pay, starting with president Macri! Let them all go to jail!
No trust in the “justice” of the rich or the Congress full of thieves!
For an independent investigation commission pushed forward by mobilizations!
While they rob, our rights get cut! Down with Macri’s cuts and fee hikes! Enough of plundering and ripping off the people!
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Translation: Hermano Melo
