José Luis Espert: Milei loses his main deputy candidate for his links with a prisoner for drug trafficking

Javier Milei has lost his deputy candidate in the province of Buenos Aires, the main electoral district of Argentina and Bastion of Peronism. José Luis Espert has submitted his resignation to the President, cornered by complaints that link him to a prisoner for drug trafficking. The political death of Sister has been a seven -day deliveries novel that ends three weeks after the legislative elections of October 26.

“This is a clearly orchestrated operation by a system that destroyed Argentina for decades and sustained by a ruthless media judgment towards my person, whom I will not continue to lend me,” Espert wrote on his social networks to justify his resignation. His argument is that the complaints against him were an invention of Kirchner Peronism, which dusted an old judicial cause that linked the businessman Fredi Fred Machado, today already waiting for an extradition to the United States for drug trafficking. Milei was in the same line: “The process of deep change we are carrying out is the only thing that matters. We will not allow a malicious operation to put it at risk.”

Espert, an ultraliberal economist, 63, is an old acquaintance of Argentine politics. In 2019 he tried to be president, but took less than 2% of the votes. It was in those times that it was linked to Machado. The businessman made available one of his private planes to transfer the candidate during the campaign. When in 2021 Machado fell prisoner for drug trafficking, Espert said he barely knew him about a fleeting encounter. The investigation in a Texas court against the businessman continued his course. Last Sunday, the Peronist leader Juan recordois, and also a candidate for deputy, revealed that in the justice of the United States he worked the proof of a transfer of 200,000 dollars from Machado to Espet and the crisis began.

The candidate blamed the filtration to Kirchnerism. Milei considered it a “hairdressing chiempo.” But not all in the government were satisfied and asked Esper to a more effective defense. The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, a senator candidate for the city of Buenos Aires, was the toughest. His flag is the fight against the narco and he feared that the suspicions about his campaign partner would end up taking votes. Obligated and unvolved, Espert gave an interview on Wednesday night he refused to answer for himself or not to the question of whether he had received dirty money.

Thursday, the newspaper The nation He published a record of the Bank of America that accounted for the transfer of money. That same night, Espert recognized, finally, that he had received a Machado payment, but attributed it to advice work for a mining company owned by the Argentine businessman in Guatemala. He added, of course, that at that time he did not know that his patron was drug trafficker. But the pressure inside the ultra -right to get off the ballot in Buenos Aires did not love.

On Friday, Espert met with Milei and everything indicated that he would renounce his candidacy. “I don’t get off at all,” was the response of the candidate, for the stupor of the ministers who asked for their head to avoid an electoral massacre. Milei had decided to support him in order not to be defeated before Kirchnerism. This Sunday, finally, he had to give in.

The ultra -right now has three weeks to recover from the disaster. The Relay of Espert on the ballot will not be the candidate who followed him in second place, Karen Reichardt, an actress who had a certain reputation in the comedy cinema in the 1990s without any political experience. Milei personally requested that Reichardt had a prominent place as a candidate for Libertad advances because he loves the pet care program that he drives on public television.

The magnitude of political crisis finally gave way to pragmatism and Reichardt will yield its place to the third in the list, Diego Santilli, a reference by Mauricio Macri that was key in the negotiations for an alliance in the province between the Milei party and the pro -president’s party. “I will leave the soul to defend the course and stop those who want the country to exploit,” Santilli published in X, in reference, once again, to Kirchnerism. Your task will be titanic. On September 7, the ultra -right lost for more than 13 points in the elections for the Provincial Congress in Buenos Aires. The scandalous exit of sister does not predict a comeback at the polls.