MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former top Macrist officials added to list of defendants in Argentine case for smuggling guns to overthrow Evo in 2019

Former FM Faurie reportedly handled these affairs through obscure channels

Argentine prosecutors Monday decided to indict top-ranking officials from the administration of former President Mauricio Macri for their alleged involvement in the supplying of weapons to Bolivian armed forces who helped overthrow Evo Morales in 2019.

Former Cabinet Chief Marcos Peña, Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie and Secretary of Strategic Affairs Fulvio Pompeo were added to the list of defendants in the Argentine chapter of a historic event for which Janine Áñez, who became Bolivia's interim President after Morales' resignation, has been charged in her country with crimes against humanity for two separate “massacres.”

Prosecutor Claudio Navas Rial filed charges against the Macrist officials for the possible crime of smuggling weapons and ammunition into the Plurinational State of Bolivia in the run-up to the military coup against Morales.

Already indicted in the same case are Macri himself, former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Defense Minister Oscar Aguad, as well as then Argentine Ambassador to Bolivia Normando Normando Álvarez García and then Gendarmería Nacional (Border Guard) head Gerardo Otero.

The prosecution has thus agreed to follow up on charges filed by current Security Minister Sabina Frederic, Justice Minister Martín Soria; and AFIP tax bureau head Mercedes Marcó del Pont, who has reportedly provided the state's attorney with new evidence regarding two key meetings allegedly held on November 12, 2019, at the Casa Rosada.

In the first such encounter, Macri reportedly met in private with Faurie, who is said to have subsequently signed a “suspicious, hitherto unknown note” through which he requested the sending of Gendarmería Nacional troops to Bolivia, with the pretext of defending the Argentine embassy. But Faurie reportedly handled these affairs from outside the ordinary chain of command channels.

The second meeting is said to have taken place in Peña's office within the Casa Rosada to organize the shipment of war material to the Bolivian Police and Air Force the following day (November 13, 2019). Bullrich and Otero are said to have been present at that meeting.

Navas Rial considered that ”the elements provided by the plaintiffs on this occasion allow to preliminarily strengthen the hypothesis of the case originally outlined, at the same time that they justify directing the investigation's attention to the conduct attributed to then Cabinet Chief, Marcos Peña” as well as Faurie and Pompeo.

The magistrate handling the case is Judge Javier López Biscayart.

Meanwhile, Macri joined a list of former heads of governments who have asked the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN) to take action to preserve the life and well-being of the incarcerated Áñez, who on Sunday tried to commit suicide after learning she would be facing crimes against humanity charges.

The document was signed by these former leaders: José María Aznar (Spain); Oscar Arias, Rafael Ángel Calderón, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Laura Chinchilla and Luis Guillermo Solís (Costa Rica); Nicolás Ardito Barletta, Ernesto Pérez Balladares and Mireya Moscoso (Panama); Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox (Mexico); Alfredo Cristiani (El Salvador); Federico Franco and Juan Carlos Wasmosy (Paraguay); Eduardo Frei (Chile); Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe (Colombia); Osvaldo Hurtado and Jamil Mahuad (Ecuador); Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera and Julio María Sanguinetti (Uruguay); and Jorge Tuto Quiroga (Bolivia).