HUGE WEEK FOR MESSI Superstar Lionel Messi celebrated a bittersweet 39th birthday two days in advance last Monday by scoring two goals against Austria in Dallas last Monday, the first of which saw him overtake German striker Miroslav Klose to become the top all-time scorer in World Cup history – as fate would have it, exactly four decades after Diego Maradona scored both arguably the most brilliant and the most controversial (“Hand of God”) goals against England in Mexico City. But his week was also
dogged by worries about the health of his father Jorge Messi, although he was checked out of a Rosario hospital last Tuesday, thus contributing to a happier birthday party the following day, while remaining unable to fly to the United States to watch his son’s glorious World Cup progress. The 2-0 victory against Austria qualified Argentina for the next round. POPE ON WAY Pope Leo XIV will be spending the first half of November in Latin America, mostly in Peru but also three days in
Argentina and half that time in Uruguay, it could virtually be confirmed by the chief military chaplain Bishop Santiago Olivera last Wednesday following a general papal audience alongside a score of Argentine peace-keeping troops serving the United Nations in Cyprus and commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Martín Pérez although the official announcement has still to follow. Apart from this city, Córdoba and Santiago del Estero (as Argentina’s oldest diocese) are also tipped as stops on the papal tour. DOLLARS GALORE Court raids on the houses of Jesica
Cirio and her ex-husband Elías Piccirillo followed the release of videos showing stacks of dollars in a wardrobe on the orders of federal judge Luis Armella at the request of the prosecutor Sergio Mola. The bundles of dollars in plastic bags amounting to as much as US$20 million were on display in a San Vicente gated community house belonging to another ex-husband of Cirio, former Lomas de Zamora mayor Martín Insaurralde. The raid on Cirio’s Palermo home yielded US$19,000 and firearms belonging to her current
partner, the businessman Nicolás Trombino. Cirio allegedly used the videos to extort her divorce from Insaurralde while she also claimed to be a victim of extortion. The television personality insisted that the videos had been illegally obtained without her consent and had been “digitally manipulated.” All the earnings from all her work since the age of 18 had been duly declared, Cirio insisted. On Tuesday she surrendered her mobile telephone to the court and gave a fixed address in compliance with judicial instructions. SUPER RIGI
HALFWAY THROUGH CONGRESS The Chamber of Deputies last Wednesday approved the government bill to create the Régimen de Incentivo para Grandes Inversiones en Nuevas Industrias (abbreviated to Súper RIGI) incentive scheme for major investments by a 130-106 vote, sending it on to the Senate for final parliamentary approval. The Super RIGI was designed by the Economy Ministry with the aim of capturing mega-investments in frontier technologies on the basis of juicy tax breaks and Customs and exchange rate benefits, extending to bills linked to activities
which do not exist in Argentina or are at an experimental stage. ARGENTINA NOT EMERGING Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) decided against bumping Argentina up to frontier market status last Tuesday, keeping it in the bottom “standalone” category for the rest of the year. This places statutory limits against international funds investing in Argentine shares and denies access to capital markets. The credit rating agency gave as its reasons the continuation of ‘cepo’ capital and currency controls at company level while expressing “doubts about the
stability of a free-market economy.” In the past couple of months Argentina has received more joy from Fitch and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) rating agencies, which upgraded Argentina from ‘CCC+’ to ‘B-’. ANOTHER UN MALVINAS RESOLUTION The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation issued a new resolution urging Argentina and the United Kingdom to renew bilateral negotiations with a view to finding a peaceful and lasting solution to the Malvinas sovereignty issue, the Foreign Ministry informed via an official communiqué while underlining the “broad international
support” for Argentine claims. These resolutions have been almost an annual ritual since 1965. While intervening in the debate, Foreign Pablo Quirno described the commitment to recovering the full exercise of Malvinas sovereignty rights within the framework of international law as “irrevocable.” NEW MEDIA MEN Deputy Adrián Ravier (La Libertad Avanza-La Pampa) informally took over as presidential spokesman from Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni last Monday. Ravier will request leave from his Congress seat in a move designed to take pressure off the legally embattled Adorni.
The new spokesman is closely linked to President Javier Milei, who reportedly considers him stronger than Adorni on the economic side. On the same day Adorni announced that Javier Lanari would cease being Communications & Press secretary, giving him his “enormous thanks” for his 30 months in the post. Late in the day the name of Fabián Fernández (YPF state oil company spokesman until then) emerged as his replacement. MILEI WAVES HIS FLAG President Javier Milei maintained that Manuel Belgrano was the “first Argentine economic
liberal intellectual” during last Saturday’s Flag Day ceremony in Rosario, a commemoration he skipped last year. Milei went on to describe the flag created by Belgrano as “the visible representation of the cause of liberty,” breaking with the colonial order with its mercantilism and driving forward independence. Argentina’s flag was actually created on February 27, 1812 but June 20 (the date of Belgrano’s death at the age of 50 in 1820) is Flag Day in Argentina. Milei was flanked at the ceremony by Santa Fe
Province Radical Governor Maximiliano Pullaro and Rosario Mayor Pablo Javkin but controversial Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni formed part of his entourage while estranged Vice-President Victoria Villarruel was invited separately by Pullaro. Milei flew to Spain last Thursday to deliver a lecture at a private university and woo investors before returning home tomorrow to host Brazilian far right presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro here next week. SUPREME COURT REBUFF The Supreme Court last Thursday dismissed the government complaint presented against the case lodged by the National Inter-University
Council against Decree 759/25 on the grounds that no definition had been reached. The decree in question froze any further spending on education without clarification as to its funding. ESPERT DEFENCE SCORNED San Isidro federal prosecutor Fernando Domínguez assured last weekend that the contract for mining consultancy services in Guatemala presented by ex-deputy and former libertarian candidate José Luis Espert was a forgery seeking to whitewash the US$200,000 received for his 2019 presidential campaign from the businessman Federico ‘Fred’ Machado now serving a prison sentence
in Texas after being extradited to the United States last October (54 months after his arrest here). The court was able to establish that Espert never travelled to Guatemala to perform the services in the contract with the firm Minas del Pueblo SA for mines which were not operational. Machado had been charged with drug-trafficking but the charges were dropped in return for pleading guilty to fraud and money-laundering. The assets of Espert and his wife María Mercedes González have meanwhile been frozen. MENDOZA ACTIVISTS
FREED The two Mendoza activists detained in Libya on May 24 while aboard the humanitarian 50-vessel flotilla Global Sumud Maghreb were freed in Benghazi last Tuesday, Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno confirmed, naming them as news portal researchers María Paula Giménez and Lucas Aguilera and reporting them to be “safely” in Istanbul. The humanitarian fleet had been transporting food, medicine and ambulances from Mauritania to the Gaza Strip. Quirno added that the releases were the fruit of “permanent consular and political work . without speculating about
Argentine citizens who need help abroad.”
Lionel Messi, Jorge Messi, Pope Leo XIV, Super RIGI, MSCI, Malvinas, Javier Milei, Manuel Adorni, Chamber of Deputies, Supreme Court, Decree 759/25, Mendoza activists, Libya, Global Sumud Maghreb