• Voting Alberto Fernández assumes full powers in Argentina for "economic emergency"

It is not normal for an entire country to know the name of a secret agent and have it as a symbol of darkness and the dangers lurking in the basement of the State. It is not normal, but it is what happens in Argentina, where no one is indifferent to the mention of Jaime Stiuso, an electronic engineer who entered espionage services in 1972, during the dictatorship of Alejandro Lanusse, and was expelled from his post in 2014, in the throes of the Government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

At 66, Stiuso remains a dark power, and many wonder if he will take action in the face of the challenge posed by the new president, Alberto Fernández, of completely reforming the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI). Fernández today appointed by decree the former prosecutor Cristina Caamaño as intervener of the agency for 180 days. Stiuso should have special interest in the matter, because Fernández's Secretary of Strategic Affairs is Gustavo Béliz, his greatest enemy in Argentine politics. Catholic lawyer linked to Opus Dei, Béliz was secretary of the Civil Service and Interior Minister of Carlos Menem between 1989 and 1993. At the time he said he felt that he was coming to the Government "in a white suit to a quagmire" and that he was getting into " middle of a nest of vipers. " Years later he discovered that the vipers were the least important. According to Beliz, during the government of the Peronist Menem, Argentina lived "a narco-democracy where the law was not respected, where public officials washed dirty money (...) with a strong level of complicity with corruption and drug trafficking." In case it was not clear, he added the following: "In the Argentina of the 90s there were laws bought and sold in Congress, as if they were merchandise." Menem is today a senator, and the privileges granted to him from that position prevent him from serving the seven-year prison sentence for illegal arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia while he was president.

But Beliz is a man of faith, and he gave the opportunity to a second Peronist government, that of Nestor Kirchner, of whom he was Minister of Justice from 2003. One day, the minister went to see Kirchner to warn him that "Stiuso it was' the power in the shadows' and that I was intervening phones without a court order, journalist Daniel Santoro recalled in Clarín years ago. "Beliz told Kirchner: 'You can feel that if you' tap 'phones to have more information powerful, but you are going to be a slave to those who prick them '. 'Leave, I take care of that,' the president replied in front of Cristina (Kirchner). Days later, Beliz was thrown out of the Government and Stiuso became the career spy with more power "in Argentine espionage.

Between the meeting with Kirchner and his dismissal, Beliz had done something unprecedented: he went to a television show and showed a picture of Stiuso, whose face was unknown, denouncing that he was boycotting investigations for the cause of AMIA, the attack on the Jewish mutual in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead in 1994, and that the Argentine justice concluded that it was the work of the government of Iran.

With renewed faith, and after years of withdrawal in Washington working for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Beliz is now part of a third Peronist government. "Gustavo left our government in situations that I prefer to forget," said Fernandez, who was Kirchner's chief of staff, presenting him as one of his right hands. With the superpower law already passed in the Senate, the president decided that a good part of the reserved funds of the spies will go to the fight against hunger. No one doubts in Argentina that Fernández will have attributions never seen in democracy, he can do and undo as he pleases. Enough to tame Argentine spies?

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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