She romped to an easy victory in last year’s presidential election by promising to maintain Argentina’s impressive economic performance while easing its social tensions and rebuilding its foreign relations. Yet just five months after Cristina Fernández succeeded her husband, Néstor Kirchner, in the Casa Rosada, Argentina is worse off on all three counts. Already, her government looks in disarray. It has provoked a tax revolt by farmers. On April 24th, it lost its most important new face when Martín Lousteau resigned as economy minister over a policy disagreement. The price of Argentina’s bonds has plunged as investors show little confidence in the government.

With the economy having grown at over 8% a year since 2003, when it began a vigorous recovery from an earlier financial collapse, Mr Kirchner basked in popularity. He was helped by record prices for Argentina’s farm exports but pumped up the economy further, with dollops of public spending and an undervalued currency. He brushed off worries about inflation, strong-arming businesses into freezing prices and ordering an underling to doctor the consumer-price index.

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Hate is contagious. It spreads like a disease, devouring its carrier in much the same way that viruses like Ebola devour theirs. It is an emotional carcinogen capable of destroying lives and relationships. And just as cancer corrodes the body, hate corrodes the body politic. It inspires animosity, distrust and anger. It can coarsen a country’s social fabric, leaving it worn out and unwoven.

Argentina’s political debates are often tinged with remnants of hatred that stem from physical and emotional battles that occurred decades ago. Sometimes this is hard to see; other times, it is hard to avoid.

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Maletinazo, or the suitcase scandal, is a 2007 scandal involving Venezuela and Argentina, souring friendship between the countries.^[1][2] The word comes from maletín (the Spanish word for suitcase or briefcase) and the suffix -azo which implies a blow or event of some magnitude. It is also known as valijagate, maletagate and maletíngate (following the -gate construction and the Spanish word maleta or valija for suitcase or briefcase). The scandal began when Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan-US entrepreneur, arrived in Argentina on a private flight hired by Argentine and Venezuelan state officials carrying US$800,000 in cash which he failed to declare.

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Four alleged Venezuelan agents have been arrested in the U.S. and charged with trying to persuade a U.S. citizen to keep quiet about a growing international election scandal.

The U.S. Justice Department said the four wanted to prevent Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a businessman from Miami, Florida, from talking to authorities.

On August 4, Antonini Wilson flew in a privately chartered aircraft from Caracas, Venezuela, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where customs officers discovered $800,000 in cash in his possession.

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Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan businessman who tried to enter Argentina with a misterious suitcase carrying USD 790,550, is considering the possibility to give himself up to the authorities.

A close friend told Argentinean daily newspaper Clarín that Antonini Wilson is supposedly ready to travel to Argentina for a voluntary deposition before judge Marta Novatti, Clarín said on its website.

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The twisted mystery of an $800,000 suitcase confiscated in Argentina has kicked up so much dirt that almost everyone who gets near it — even if clean — is accused of being filthy.Businessman Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, who holds U.S. and Venezuelan passports, was stopped at an airport here in August with a suitcase full of undeclared cash. His visit raised immediate suspicions.

Is Antonini a bagman used by the government of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez to deliver illegal political money to the candidate who would become Argentina’s president, as a federal grand jury in Florida charged last week? Or is the United States using the Florida resident to meddle in the affairs of the region, as many here have argued?

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Argentina’s new president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, started her first week in office on the wrong foot: She needlessly moved closer to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and away from the United States.

Judging from what I heard from sources across the political spectrum in Washington, Fernández’s knee-jerk reaction to a Miami court’s indictment alleging that Venezuela contributed money to Argentina’s 2007 presidential elections was a textbook case of political inexperience, bad advice, greater-than-expected ties to Venezuela’s petro-populist government or all of the above.

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A Miami man who brought $800,000 in a suitcase into Argentina was trying to deliver a campaign contribution from the Venezuelan government to the Argentine presidential candidate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, American prosecutors said Wednesday. Assistant United States Attorney Thomas J. Mulvihill said in court Wednesday that conversations recorded by the F.B.I. indicate that Mrs. Kirchner, who won the election and was sworn in on Monday here as Argentina’s president, was the intended recipient of the money, said Alicia Valle, special counsel to the U.S. Attorney in Miami.

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THE polling stations were still open on October 28th when a pair of giant inflatable penguins, one male, one female, were set up in the plaza outside the hotel where Cristina Fernández de Kirchner celebrated her election as Argentina’s president. Her husband, Néstor, who has held the job since 2003, revels in his nickname the “penguin”, bestowed upon him because of his previous job as governor of the distant Patagonian province of Santa Cruz. And like a true penguin, he showed his commitment to his family with his surprising decision earlier this year to have his wife run in his stead.

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The landslide victory of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s current president, seemed to signal that the Peronist party was back and stronger than ever. But the way she won the presidency and the economic challenges she faces will prove a stiff test of her abilities to keep the couple in power.Mrs. Kirchner, 54, won on Sunday with 45 percent of the vote, becoming Argentina’s first woman to be elected president and cementing the Kirchners as a political dynasty.

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She cruised to presidential victory on the successful economic policies of her husband, President Nestor Kirchner, who delivered four years of brisk growth in the aftermath of a national financial and political breakdown.

But First Lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whose election was confirmed by near-final results Monday, faces serious challenges as she prepares to take office for a four-year term Dec. 10 as Argentina’s first elected female chief of state.

“The president-elect won’t have a honeymoon,” Fernando Gonzalez wrote in the daily Clarin. “It is well known that Argentina is cruel with success.”

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Buoyed by her landslide election victory on Sunday, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s first elected female head of state, has come to office committed to building bridges with her opponents and rebuilding the credibility of institutions. After four years in which the left-of-centre populist government – headed by her husband Néstor Kirchner – scorned constitutional niceties, Ms Fernández’s more open stance is welcome. But it should be regarded with scepticism.

It is true Mr Kirchner forged links between his now dominant faction on the left of the Peronist party and other leftwing and centrist parties, but in many ways Mr Kirchner and his wife – who played an important role in the past government – have used classic Peronist tactics to cement their power.

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CRISTINA FERN¿NDEZ de Kirchner was elected president of Argentina on Sunday in a relatively free and fair vote. That’s not to be taken for granted; not only has Argentina suffered from chronic political turmoil in the past, but several other Latin American governments, led by Hugo Ch¿vez’s Venezuela, are working to dismantle the liberal democracies established throughout the region in the 1980s. Ms. Fern¿ndez de Kirchner was nominated by her husband, the outgoing president N¿stor Kirchner, who poured state resources into her campaign. Yet she could have won without the extra help: The Kirchners are riding a wave of popularity born of rapidly rising incomes for Argentines during the past four years.

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Just a few years ago Argentina was deep in crisis. It defaulted on its foreign debt, bank customers were prohibited from withdrawing their own savings, businesses went bust and almost half the population found itself below the poverty line.

But now, for most, those troubles are a distant memory.

President Nestor Kirchner’s government paid off Argentina’s debt to the International Monetary Fund, construction is booming, exports are up, annual growth averages 8% and the rates of poverty and unemployment are looking much healthier.

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Take a good look at this picture. What do you see? Anything out of the ordinary?

Keep looking.

See anything odd yet?

If not, you either have bad vision or you’re not the kind of person who is obsessed with appearance and aesthetic propriety. Apparently, what Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sees in this photo is a pair of XXL-sized legs - hers. Compare her legs with those of Karolina Rabolini, the ex-model and wife of Argentine Vice President Daniel Scioli.

Are Cristina’s legs extra large or Rabolini’s extra small? Perhaps both. But who really cares? Apparently, quite a few people. The weekly news magazine Noticias placed this picture in a recent article about the cost of Cristina’s election bid. Reportedly, her campaign has cost taxpayers around $130 million pesos, more than any other for a non-sitting president.

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With two weeks left until Argentines choose a new president, first lady Sen. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is cruising to a historic victory, even though she’s revealed little about who she is or what she’d do once in office.

The 54-year-old candidate has kept her campaign appearances to a minimum in the run-up to the vote Oct. 28 and has even refused to take part in a debate among presidential candidates.Nonetheless, many in this nation of 40 million seem ready to support her as a show of confidence in her popular husband, who isn’t running for re-election.

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It was inevitable that the pressure from the bondholders that didn’t enter the swap would be felt on this tour by the presidential couple in this city. A colorful demonstration, with “extras” dressed as teachers in violet tunics in the heart of Manhattan, demanded a solution yesterday for the debt that remains in default. “Argentina, win respect and pay the debt”, “Stop the Argentine culture of corruption” and “Cristina, negotiate with the bondholders” were some of the signs that were held up yesterday at noon. The “scene setter” happened on the corner of Park Avenue and 48th Street, one and a half blocks from the Waldorf Astoria. It coincided, of course, with Cristina’s presence at that hotel, where the lunch was being held with investors organized by the Council of the Americas. “It was the closest that the police allowed us to express ourselves. It’s been over a week that we’ve been asking for permission,” said one of the organizers.

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Argentine President Nestor Kirchner will finish his term this year as the man who put the country back on track after the catastrophic crisis of 2001 took a heavy toll on its economy. When Kirchner took office in 2003, after then-President Eduardo Duhalde resigned, Argentina had just gone through the crisis and the people were waiting for someone deemed trustworthy enough to lead the country back to stability.

Kirchner’s tough stance toward the IMF in renegotiating the country’s debt together with a series of harsh economic remedies turned Argentina into the fastest growing Latin American economy. With more than 8 percent GDP growth per year during his term, Kirchner went from a president who had received only 22 percent of the vote in the first round of the elections to a man with around an 80 percent approval rating just a year after he took office.

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BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 24 — With just over a month to go before voters will choose a new president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, or “Queen Cristina,” as she is widely known here, is living up to her nickname.

Over the past two months, Mrs. Kirchner, a senator in Buenos Aires and wife of President Néstor Kirchner, has been treating her attempt to become Argentina’s first elected female president more like a coronation than a campaign.

With a healthy lead of at least 25 percentage points over her closest rival, Mrs. Kirchner has all but eschewed photo-ops with actual Argentines here in favor of coverage abroad with foreign bankers, dignitaries and international investors in Europe and the United States.

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Despite a string of scandals, shady inflation numbers and other questionable practices, Argentines are set to elect another Kirchner.

It is no secret that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent billions to purchase Argentine bonds that he then resells to Venezuelan banks at high interest rates. Nor is it a secret that the Argentine government purchases fuel oil from Venezuelan energy giant PDVSA at inflated prices.

Money earned from fuel oil sales are then reinvested in Argentina. It is used specifically to purchase Argentine goods, enriching hand picked Argentine companies. Chavez makes money and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner gains the much-needed political support to keep his coalition strong and in power.

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Fugitive Venezuelan-American “bagman” Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, wanted by Argentina in connection with the US$800,000 he attempted to smuggle into Buenos Aires, will reportedly plead guilty, and serve a six-month jail sentence in Argentina for his crime. If you are looking for a reason why he would leave his comfortable Key Biscayne, Florida residence, to serve time, sources inside Venezuela advise that he will reportedly receive a large sum from the Chavez government in exchange for falling upon his sword, and refraining from disclosing any information to Argentinean and Venezuelan authorities. If this happens, will the truth never be known?

Impeccable sources from Venezuela have now supplied heretofore unknown details about the bulk-cash smuggling operation which has created a major scandal in both Argentina and Venezuelan politics:

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Ever since the time of Juan Perón corruption has permeated Argentine society. Fraud and bribes are part of everyday life, and anyone wishing to do business compromises. Sometimes corruption may be a shortcut through bureaucracy, but when the system is both inefficient and dirty, there are no justifications.

The other day, at the Café Evian in the heart of a Latin American metropolis, I sat waiting for Alida. It is normally me who begs for a meeting, but this time it was she who got in touch, hinting that she had something explosive to tell me. When she eventually appeared, this punctual and organised person had her hair on end and tears in her eyes. For several years Alida, who is in reality called something else, has been fighting for public finance for her project to help street children to an education and a settled life.

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According to the annual survey by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International, Finland, Iceland, and New Zealand are perceived to be the world’s least corrupt countries, and Haiti is perceived to be the most corrupt. The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country’s public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, drawing on 12 polls and surveys from 9 independent institutions, which gathered the opinions of businesspeople and country analysts. Only 163 of the world’s 193 countries are included in the survey, due to an absence of reliable data from the remaining countries. The scores range from ten (squeaky clean) to zero (highly corrupt). A score of 5.0 is the number Transparency International considers the borderline figure distinguishing countries that do and do not have a serious corruption problem.

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It was always clear that the Peronist candidate for president would have Kirchner as a last name. But for months now, the big question in Argentine politics has been whether President Nestor Kirchner would seek re-election in October or designate his wife, Sen. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as the candidate. “Será pingüino o pingüina,” Kirchner frequently said with a smile, using the male and female versions of his nickname—Penguin—which makes reference to his origins in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region.

The answer came Sunday. After a week in which all that anyone seemed to talk about were regional electoral defeats for Kirchner’s Frente Para la Victoria in the city of Buenos Aires and in Tierra del Fuego, the country’s southernmost province, the president decided to change the subject. The candidate will be a pingüina.

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The management of the Swedish construction group Skanska has become embroiled in an alleged corruption scandal involving some of its former workers in Argentina, Swedish radio SR said on Tuesday.

Skanska fired seven workers for its Argentinian subsidiary after allegations that they avoided taxes and paid bribes to secure a contract for the construction of a gas pipeline in the north of the country.

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CAMPAIGNING for Argentina’s presidency in 2003, Néstor Kirchner promised voters that he would “renew the political culture”, cleansing it of corruption. The first three years of his term were free of big scandals. But just six months before a presidential election in which he may seek a second term, his government’s reputation for honest dealing is facing its first serious test, as details trickle out about a state-administered pipeline project sullied by front companies, fake billing and suspicions of bribes. Investigations have not unearthed any evidence of wrongdoing by government officials, and the sums involved are fairly small. But opponents claim that the rot goes deeper.

The roots of the scandal lie in Mr Kirchner’s energy policy, which relies heavily on price controls. Under Argentina’s successful privatisation of its natural-gas industry in 1992, private companies decided where and how much to invest in pipelines. A government regulator authorised tariff increases to pay for the projects.

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It is said that when president Néstor Kirchner met George W. Bush for the first time in Washington in 2003, soon after Kirchner had been elected, the White House was trying to figure out if the Argentinian was a new Hugo Chávez, or an Argentinian version of Chilean president Ricardo Lagos. Kirchner, in turn, was there to assure Mr. Bush he was definitely not a new Chávez; time would make clear that he was not a new Lagos either.(1) Kirchner came to power in May 2003 with a meagre 22 per cent of the popular vote, thanks to former president Carlos Menem’s refusal to run in the presidential runoff (Kirchner was sure to win with a near 70 per cent of the votes). At that moment, Argentina was a country in default with an un-payable foreign debt, official levels of poverty of more than 50 per cent, billions of pesos in different provincial bonds replacing the national currency, and a highly mobilized population that had recently overthrown five presidents and would not tolerate any further disappointment or betrayal. How did Argentina, the most industrialized country in Latin America at the beginning of the 20th century, enter the 21st century in such a state?

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SUDDENLY the economic outlook has turned a bit stormy for Argentina’s president, Néstor Kirchner. Rationing of gas and electricity has become routine. Investors have lost confidence in the officially-massaged inflation numbers and credit markets are queasy. While yields on Brazil’s bonds rose by only 53 basis points in the month to August 6th, those of Argentine bonds rose by 166 points—just when the government must roll over $3 billion in maturing debt.

But Mr Kirchner seems to reckon he has a saviour in his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chávez, a man whose government has both energy and money. Visiting Buenos Aires this week, on yet another South American tour, Mr Chávez offered to buy $500m in Argentine bonds (and another $500m later). “He’s always been there when we’ve needed him,” said Alberto Fernández, Mr Kirchner’s chief of staff. In return, Argentina has given diplomatic support to Mr Chávez.

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While the world struggles against catastrophes such as the recent plane crash in Brazil or the permanent threat of international terrorism, Kirchner’s Argentina faces daily news that go from the increase in pulmonary diseases due to the cold weather and poor eating habits of the population to the lack of fuel. Over 7,000 industries have been hit by energy cuts in the past sixty days, and the industrial production index fell for the first time since 2005. That is unless we flick through the pages of the newspapers, which includes the most disgraceful information about the national cabinet.

The Economy Minister had to resign, unable to explain what a quarter million dollars where doing in her office toilet. The Environment Secretary was accused by newspaper “Clarín” of appointing more than 350 agents in one year, reaching an average of one person a day including a long list of relatives and personal friends whose professional skills, if any, have little to do with environmental policies. Another member of the national cabinet is the star of the scandal of the week. It is the Defence Minister, the former wife of terrorist Juan Manuel Abal Medina, who was summoned by a judge to explain the details of weapon smuggling to the US during her mandate. A few months ago, the case of company Skanska had hit the headlines due to its connection with irregularities, overpricing, and bribes involving top officers in state company Enargas, created during the Kirchner administration.

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He was a 23-year-old engineering student from a middle-class family, kidnapped one night early this year on his way to see his fiancée. Days later, while held for ransom, he managed to escape, but when neighbors alerted the police to a man running down the street calling for help, they say they were ordered back into their houses and told to mind their own business.Only later, after the student, Axel Blumberg, was fatally shot in March, did an explanation for that seemingly strange police behavior emerge. Two senior members of the Buenos Aires provincial police were charged with complicity in the case, and an investigating magistrate says others in the local precinct have also been implicated in the act, which is believed to have been carried out by an organized-crime gang.

For Argentines, the Blumberg case has become a scandal so heinous that it has led to protest marches and the formation of civic groups. But current and former police officials and Argentine criminologists said the only aberrations were the exposure of the misdeed, its fatal conclusion and the outraged public response. What was apparently the involvement of the police, they said, is actually an example of business as usual that could not take place unless it also involved powerful politicians who provided protection.

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SUBJECT: Fallout from the May 8 arrest of former Skanska executives on bribery charges.

SIGNIFICANCE: Evidence that Skanska paid bribes in connection with the awarding of infrastructure contracts has renewed concern over the government’s failure to tackle corruption effectively. Lack of transparency in regulatory and financing procedures appears in fact to have heightened corruption risks.ANALYSIS: In December 2005, investigation of tax evasion allegations against the Argentine subsidiary of Swedish construction company Skanska revealed that the company (and others) allegedly had acquired false receipts from a phantom company, Infiniti, for services never rendered. The investigations also revealed payment of 13.4 million pesos (4.3 million dollars) apparently in bribes by seven Skanska executives, who were sacked by the company last year. All seven were arrested on the orders of federal judge Javier Lopez Biscayart on May 8. Lopez Biscayart is in practice responsible for investigating the tax evasion allegations against Skanska; a second federal judge, Guillermo Montenegro, is investigating the bribery claims — a division likely to complicate progress in the case.

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A top public works official in Argentina resigned Tuesday after being linked to a widening probe of bribery allegations involving President Nestor Kirchner’s government.Public Works Undersecretary Raul Rodriguez became the third government official to leave his post as investigators look into claims of kickbacks in government-funded natural gas pipeline projects.

The probe has become a political liability for Kirchner before an October presidential election and opposition candidates are using it to criticize his government.

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A public works scandal besieging President Nestor Kirchner’s government widened Monday when an Argentine judge expanded a kickbacks probe to include 12 private construction firms.

The scandal centers on suspected illegal payoffs in a government-funded project to extend a natural gas pipeline in Argentina in 2005.

Last year, the local unit of Swedish construction company Skanska said it had discovered “irregular” payments in the project and fired a group of Argentine executives. Six of the former executives were detained recently and judicial authorities raided the offices of the company’s local unit looking for evidence.

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More brouhaha for the government

Following a string of recent corruption allegations, the administration of President Néstor Kirchner is being hit with a new brouhaha surrounding his economy minister, Felisa Miceli. The case could damage Mr Kirchner’s image by adding to a growing perception that corruption runs deep in his government. Ms Miceli may ultimately be sacrificed. However, the incident will have little if any effect on economic policy, which is largely run directly by the president and his inner circle. Nor is it likely to undermine his wife’s prospects in the October 28th presidential elections.

Accusations of irregularities and payoffs, particularly in public-works and other government contracts, have been made since 2005, but only in recent months have they been accompanied by evidence. The case of a large natural-gas pipeline project, which surfaced in March, may involve as much as US$25m in illegal payments to government officials, according to opposition politicians and a judge. At least one foreign company, Sweden’s Skanska, has been implicated.

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A public works scandal besieging President Nestor Kirchner’s government widened Monday when an Argentine judge expanded a kickbacks probe to include 12 private construction firms.The scandal centers on suspected illegal payoffs in a government-funded project to extend a natural gas pipeline in Argentina in 2005.

Last year, the local unit of Swedish construction company Skanska said it had discovered “irregular” payments in the project and fired a group of Argentine executives. Six of the former executives were detained recently and judicial authorities raided the offices of the company’s local unit looking for evidence.

On Monday, Judge Guillermo Montenegro said 12 local construction firms now also are under investigation in the scandal. Argentine newspaper Clarin reported the judge was looking into accusations that false receipts were used to conceal kickbacks.

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