MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former Argentine Ambassador to Venezuela accused of treason

The Security Ministry said Laborde was a collaborator of Maduro's Chavista regime

Argentia's Security Minister Thursday filed criminal charges for treason against former Ambassador to Venezuela Oscar Laborde for meddling before the Bolivarian regime in the case of Border Guard (Gendarmería Nacional) non-commissioned officer Nahuel Gallo who was apprehended by Caracas and accused of espionage. Signing the documents was Security Ministry's Chief Legal Counselor Fernando Soto.

Gallo insisted he went to Venezuela to visit his romantic partner María Alexandra Gómez García and the two-year-old child they have in common.

“While the Chancellery tries to obtain Gallo's release through diplomatic channels, through the relevant international missions, the former ambassador of the Argentine Republic to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Oscar Alberto Laborde - appointed by then-President Alberto Fernández-, without any kind of official authorization, began international negotiations, contacting the family of the gendarme in Argentina in order to deliver a letter' to Gallo, with the collaboration of the Venezuelan government,” the complaint argued.

“The accused was in charge of presenting as 'irregular' the entry of the gendarme since he did not meet the legal requirements to enter that country,” it was also explained.

Laborde's actions did not respond to any “humanitarian issue” regardless of his statements to the press. “On the contrary, far from defending the human rights of the 'missing' gendarme, what he does is to unduly superimpose himself on the international diplomatic management of the Argentine Republic in order to justify the openly criminal conduct of the Venezuelan authorities under the puerile pretext of an alleged 'irregular entry' that would support the invented suspicion of 'espionage', in addition to endorsing the conditions of detention, of disappearance, generating an alleged knowledge without having indicated the most minimal legal guidelines of his detention, thus endorsing the crime of forced disappearance,” the Libertarian Government maintained.

Since the former ambassador “acted against the interests of the country” by assuming “diplomatic powers that can only be exercised by the representatives of the Foreign Ministry,” Laborde was deemed a “collaborator of the [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro regime”.

President Javier Milei's administration insisted it had not asked Laborde to perform “any intervention or diplomatic action” nor did it authorize “any action for him to make representations” to the Venezuelan government. “His actions are only aimed at collaborating with the regime that illegally detained the gendarme Gallo, presenting as 'humanitarian' a dictatorial government and as 'fascist' our democratic government, by presenting the case as an illegal entry aimed at intervening in a foreign country through an 'espionage service' with a security force in an illegitimate manner.”

The former Mercosur Parliament (Parlasur) Speaker Laborde is turning “things around” by bestowing upon himself “powers of international representation that, clearly, he no longer possesses,” which constituted treason, the Security Ministry also claimed. The former diplomat “turns the victimizer into the victim and the victim into the victimizer, when it is exactly the other way around,” it went on. “He tries to justify the Venezuelan government as if it were logical and legal to kidnap a person for -supposedly- not having [his] 'papers in order'. He asks the Argentine Republic for explanations instead of asking [them] from the government that kidnaps a foreigner depriving him of his freedom in a 'forced disappearance,” Buenos Aires insisted.

“It would be like asking French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet why they traveled to Argentina in 1977, instead of questioning [former Navy officer] Alfredo Astiz for having murdered them,” Soto's rationale further elaborated. Hence, “former ambassador Oscar Alberto Laborde is denounced for having betrayed the interests of the Argentine Nation in a case that is of an unusual institutional gravity in the international concert of countries, acting with the evident intention of exposing political arguments to damage the role of the Argentine government in the protection of the gendarme whose forced disappearance is claimed. The assumption of the international management assumed by the accused was carried out against the diplomatic management deployed by our authorities, compromising our Nation by presenting it as pretending to 'infiltrate a spy' in Venezuela, entering it irregularly to that country,” the lawyer stressed. Laborde's attempt to blame Argentina for the Gallo case is based on “false facts” and on the “concealment of authentic information,” the Ministry also noted while insisting that the purpose of Gallo's trip was to visit his wife and his two-year-old son.“

”The adulteration of the truth of the facts was carried out with disloyalty to the high responsibility entrusted to him by the Argentine Republic when it appointed him ambassador to, precisely, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The responsibility of the accused is greater since his duty to defend the national interests is greater due to the hierarchy of such a high diplomatic position,“ the accusation also stated. Soto also recalled Argentina's issuance of an arrest warrant against Maduro.

Gendarmería Nacional's First Corporal Gallo of Squadron 27 ”Uspallata“, from Mendoza's Group XI was arrested on Dec. 8 at 11 am when entering Venezuela through a land crossing from Colombia. He claimed he had chosen that route to cut airfare costs. Gómez García and the child have been living in Venezuela for seven months to help with his mother's health problem.

Laborde said Security Minister Patricia Bullrich was to blame for the entire incident in a manner ”so obvious that even“ Vice President Victoria Villarruel said ”she would not have authorized“ Gallo's trip. Armed and Security forces personnel need clearance from their superiors regarding the place where they intend to spend their time off. Therefore, someone authorized Gallo to travel to a country with which Argentina has cut all diplomatic ties and even has the premises of what used to be its Embassy in Caracas under siege from local troops, with no electricity and water services, as five asylum seekers remain inside waiting for a safe passage to the airport.

On March 28, Bullrich said she was going to send eight gendarmes to guard the diplomatic mission and then one showed up, Laborde underlined. ”It is reasonable to think that, if she said she was going to send gendarmes, she sent him,“ he claimed while noting that diplomatic custom mandates that a country notifies the other whenever ”a military officer goes [there], even if he is on leave.“

Why was [that] not informed? Patricia Bullrich got angry because Villarruel embarrassed her,” Laborde insisted. He also said that he only used his contacts in Venezuela to facilitate the delivery of a letter from Gallo's mother to him. “I was ambassador in Venezuela a year and a half ago. What I did was with the contacts I had left from that administration, with the attorney general; I asked them if I could send a letter [to Gallo] from the mother, and the mother agreed,” Laborde explained in a radio interview. “This humanitarian action was requested” by Gallo's family, he also mentioned. “I am not asking to be thanked, but I am accused of treason for sending a letter from a mother to her son.” Laborde also regretted “that this humanitarian action has been taken as an attempt to humanize the [Venezuelan] regime.”

(See also: New Argentine Ambassador welcomed in Caracas )