Video: Martín Lousteau defended the agreement with the IMF and read the book Sincerely, by Cristina Kirchner, to give examples of capital flight

National Senator Martín Lousteau (UCR Evolution) said today that “not paying the Monetary Fund has a lot of consequences, all very serious” and warned that “there would be no foreign investment, no one would lend us and also the dollar and poverty would rise rapidly on a basis that is already very bad: today we are avoiding greater pains for our people.”

She said so in her speech in the upper house during the debate over Argentina's agreement with the Monetary Fund, but the most prominent part was when she read several excerpts from the book “Sincerely”, written by Cristina Kirchner in 2019, before being a candidate for vice president. The senator reproduced the passages where the former president referred to the management of family wealth, in movements that, for Kirchnerism, would be “capital flight”.

“You talk about the escape. Let me read a mega best seller about the leak,” Lousteau said and started with the reading: “Néstor, do me a favor and get the money out of the bank and send it out; these guys are going to make a Bonex plan, do you know what that is called? , to ask for someone to escape.”

“Some time later - I continue - and through a legal mechanism with shares listed in New York we were finally able to turn abroad,” the senator continued reading and continued: “I remember that the President of Deutsche Bank came to our apartment on Juncal Street to have us sign the documentation. That's leak. And then there is another leak because when you take money out of the Bank and put it in dollars it is also a leak, I am not holding anyone responsible, I say 'look what they say, look what happens'”.

Lousteau then read an excerpt from a newspaper article: “Cristina Kirchner explained that out of distrust of Mauricio Macri's economic policy, she had decided to transfer her savings of 66 million pesos to dollars at the exchange rate of $14.15 in June, thus earning 4 million 664 thousand dollars, that were deposited in the name of his daughter, that is also the formation of external assets or flight”.

After these readings, the senator radical stressed: “There are 30 countries that came into default with the Fund. Everyone had less growth, they all had more inflation, tension and social conflict, I say this for those who still think about voting against, this is what Argentina is exposed to”

“This went badly into the Chamber of Deputies and there was a great piecework work to achieve a project that is votable by a majority and avoid all these consequences,” he said. “The minister (Guzmán) brought a project whose times were not enough for its usual parliamentary approval,” he said, “the minister said that we were so late because the agreement is very good and we got so many things out of the bottom that we got there, despite that a large part of the government doesn't want to vote for it.”

“Faced with this, the opposition's responsibility that corrected it in the light of the Constitution, interpreted the scope of the Debt Sustainability Act, voted unanimously and today we gave two-thirds, we made it aware of our responsibility in the face of the seriousness we have,” Lousteau said.

“We already know what they are going to say: all debts are children of the deficit accumulated over time, debts are the responsibility of all governments that had deficits,” he explained.

Finally, Lousteau warned that “this consensus exercise we did is very interesting because those who are intransigent self-exclude, we can understand all the restrictions that the other has and move forward,” he said and added “it is modest, it is small, it was to avoid a catastrophe, a cataclysm as Pesce, Guzmán and Wado De Pedro said, let's use this exercise to aim for more.”

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