MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Santa Cruz Government disallows claim filed on fishery bribes

Argentina_Santa Cruz Governor, Sergio Acevedo, disallowed on Monday a serious accusation submitted by a fishing company and denied government officials had been involved in the request of important bribes to grant fishing permits.

The filed report was made public last Saturday by Antonio Barillari SA company chairman, Franco Barillari, accusing Santa Cruz Government officials of having requested money to grant fishing permits to his company.

"I am not naming names, but we were asked for USD 1 million per permit. Of course we said no," claimed the fishing executive to a local radio.

Governor Acevedo said he had asked Criminal Court 1 from Río Gallegos to "investigate the executive's claims," and for this purpose, released "all files granting fishery permits" to Barillari.

"We want the reality of the Santa Cruz fisheries to come to light," added the Patagonian governor.

In reference to Barillari's statements, Acevedo said that "he should understand that if he does not back up what he says or what he does, it demonstrates the worst kind of cowardice."

The Santa Cruz governor subsequently requested that the executive publicly identify the official who had demanded the bribe.

A few days ago, the head of the Santa Cruz Ministry of Economy, Luis Villanueva, had accused the fishing executive of "blackmail" and therefore claimed that Barillari would not be granted fishing permits.

Acevedo also pointed out that some time ago, during a meeting held with President Néstor Kirchner, Barillari spoke about fishing permits. On that occasion, he was asked regarding the labour relation of his company's people... "because Barillari's problem has always been the issue of having to operate with cooperatives."

According to Acevedo, the executive said he was going to have a public limited company system where workers be comply and be granted social security. This was a result of having being impugned by the cooperative system "because the cooperatives could not guarantee compliance to contributions of the welfare laws."

However, the executive "never comprised those public limited companies to comply with the law," Acevedo stated, adding: "Therefore, I believe Barillari was never granted those permits, although he holds eight permits, which the files handed over to the court attest to."(FIS)