“Who the hey is Lázaro Báez?,” you may ask.
Lázaro is a leading government contractor and associate of former president Cristina Kirchner,
Argentine prosecutors alleged that Mr. Báez, whose flagship construction company was set up days before Mr. Kirchner took office in 2003 and who made hundreds of millions of dollars through public projects, transferred money abroad through a global network of shell companies. Officials of Mrs. Kirchner’s administration have said the allegations had political motivations.
For Mossack Fonseca, when it rains, it pours,
Many of these firms were set up in the U.S. state of Nevada by the Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of global scrutiny.
(No, Báez is not on the list.)
The Panama-based law firm has denied any wrongdoing. On Tuesday, it said that it has no legal liability for the actions of the companies and that it has been the victim of a massive data breach. Mossack Fonseca, which acted as a “resident agent” for the companies, told The Wall Street Journal in 2014 that the companies had “no ties whatsoever to Lázaro Báez or corruption scandals in Argentina.”
The memes are up,
Lázaro Báez #MartesIntratable pic.twitter.com/BChQG5pa64
— Juan Turralde (@juan_turralde91) April 6, 2016
A congresswoman presented a legal complaint against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on charges of illicitly acquiring wealth and forging public documents, but Cristina says her family has no offshore accounts, instead of answering the actual charges.
Which, by the way, is a swipe at Macri, and a presumption of guilt on a common business practice.
For background (in Spanish) on the Kirchners, here’s Jorge Lanata’s La ruta del dinero K (The Route of the K-Money)
