MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's new Army chief electronic warfare expert

General Luis Alberto Pozzi

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner named Friday a Malvinas war veteran as the new Army chief of staff following the relieve request from General Roberto Bendini who was indicted by a federal court on alleged corruption charges.

General Luis Alberto Pozzi who was second in command behind Bendini is an engineer in Communications and Software who joined the Military School in 1965 and most of his professional career has been linked to those fields of expertise. According to his official CV during the South Atlantic conflict he was head of the South Operations theatre fixed post command. Since 1998 he was Director of Communications Systems and Software and later joint commander of the Communications, Electronic warfare and software of the Joint Chief of Staff. In 2004 he is named to head the recently created Communications and Software Command and in November head of Research, Development and Production of the Argentine Army. In December that year he became a Division General. He is a graduate from Argentina's Air and Space Technological University where he specialized in satellites. He is a "Communications System" professor in the Army's Graduate School. General Bendini a close advisor of the Kirchner couple in military affairs was forced to resign after an appeals court turned down the ruling of a lower court that exonerated the officer from the alleged corruption charges when he was commander of the XI Mechanized Brigade stationed in Rio Gallegos back in 2003. Before Bendini thirteen other Army officers including two Generals were forced to retire as part of an embezzlement investigation on alleged corruption involving bidding and purchases for the service. The case was presented last August before a federal court following an internal audit which apparently discovered alleged irregular accounting and financial operations involving the commands of the Army's air wing and the III Division with seat in Cordoba.