José Luis Espert: Milei’s main candidate in Buenos Aires, denounced for bonds with drug trafficking

A complaint for financing drug trafficking enters the electoral campaign of the Javier Milei party for the crucial legislative elections of October 26 in Argentina. The first candidate for deputy of the extreme right in the province of Buenos Aires, José Luis Espert, is indicated for having received money and other gifts from a businessman arrested in the south of the country, accused of distributing cocaine and with an extradition request from the United States. Espert acknowledged the link with Federico this Sunday Fred Machado, but said he did not know his alleged crimes.

The case puts in a delicate situation by the force of Milei, La Libertad advances (lla). Buenos Aires is not only the main district of the country, where almost 40% of the national electoral payroll votes, but it is the territory where ultra -right -wing candidates were defeated by Peronism in the recent provincial elections. It is also the place where a dozen a narco revenge ago resulted in a terrible femicide that sensitizes society, with two young people and a teenager as victims. This is where the president figure his hopes of recovering support in the next legislative elections to strengthen his government.

“Jail or bullet”, is the crutch that made Espert known (Buenos Aires, 63 years old), an ultraliberal economist who usually occurs as an Adalid of the hard hand in security matters. Elected deputy in 2021, his relationship with Milei has been oscillating: they were allies, then they erased – today president accused him four years ago of offering him money to decline his candidacy for legislator – and finally, at the end of 2023, when Milei was aimed at the Casa Rosada, they reconciled. So much so that this year the president placed him as head of Lla.

The complaint that tarnishes its current candidacy to renew Banking as a legislator refers to the 2019 electoral campaign, when Espert sought to be president and popular suffrage relegated it to the last position, with 1.47% of the votes. In that year, in proselytizing activities he traveled on a plane and used a truck linked to Fred Machado. He would also have received the sum of $ 200,000 from the businessman. The figure consists of an accounting report included as evidence in the imputation prepared by the Eastern District Prosecutor’s Office (USA) against Machado and his partner Debra Lynn Mercer-Erwin, already convicted. The turn is dated in February 2020, but it is presumed that it was carried out the previous year.

Disseminated in the last hours by newspapers Eldiario.ar and Profilethe fact was included by the legal team of the Peronist leader and candidate Juan Grabois in the local complaint he filed against Hold for money laundering.

The Argentine Fred Machado is a 53 -year -old businessman with investments in mining, construction and aviation. Since April 2021 he has been detained in the Patagonian province of Río Negro, at the request of Texas Justice, which requests its extradition as accused of illicit association for the manufacture and distribution of cocaine, money laundering and fraud. According to the imputation, Machado imported large amounts of drugs to the United States from different Latin American countries, through the fraudulent purchase of airplanes. A year before being arrested in Argentina, he had been arrested in the Texan city of Sherman. In February 2021 he had fled to Mexico and in March he had arrived in the South American country.

“Dirty campaign, another one,” Espert defended this Sunday and held Kirchner peronism responsible for the accusations against him. “This dirty campaign comes from 2021, since I was fighting for the Provincial TN. However, in the same dialogue, he admitted to meet Machado and have traveled in one of his planes: “In January or February 2019 I thanked a person who had presented me that I wanted winds ”.

One of the Hote’s problems is that the complaints for their relationship with the businessman accused of drug trafficker did not originate in Kirchnerism, but in the ultra -right itself that responds to Milei. Two years ago, the current head of the LLA block in the Chamber of Deputies Buenos Aires, Agustín Romo, defined Espert as a “value” that “to the first one who could climbed to the plane of a drug trafficker”. At the same time, the national deputy Lilia Lemoine, very close to the Argentine president, said that Espert had “put politics for twine (money)” and that “in 2019 a narco banked him.”

In addition to complicating the election campaign of the ruling party, the complaint against Espert impacts in Congress, where the government is in the minority. The Peronist opposition announced Monday that it intends to displace the economist of his position as president of the Budget Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which this week will begin to discuss the next Budget Law. “You cannot seriously discuss the 2026 budget with a deputy with drug ties sitting in the presidency of the commission,” said Deputy Germán Martínez, who leads the Peronist bench. “Our block will demand its immediate removal,” he warned.

For Milei, there is a third element that further tangles things. The request to extradite Machado to the United States was approved three years ago by a judge of first instance and since then hopes confirmation of the Supreme Court of Justice, although the general prosecutor has already ruled in favor. One of Machado’s defense lawyers is Francisco Oneto, a well -known militant of the ultra -right. It is also the lawyer of the Argentine President in various judicial causes: by case, the one who investigates an alleged multimillion -dollar scam with the $ LIBRA cryptocurrency, the digital asset that last February promoted President Ultra.