Check out Sandra Pettovello and Miley’s Hunger Plan | They inspect the warehouses in which the government stores food from the canteen

The Ministry of Human Capital not only failed to comply with the court order to present a distribution plan for the food to be distributed in the dining room and picnic areas, but also provided a list of goods in different quantities depending on who needed it. Due to this disobedience and the reported “unreliability”, at the request of prosecutor Paloma Ochoa, Judge Sebastián Casanello ordered an inspection of the Villa Martelli warehouse this Saturday. The same had been done the day before, at the Tafí Viejo warehouse in Tucumán, at the request of a prosecutor from that province. In both investigations, it was taken into account that the portfolio in charge of Sandra Pettovello recognized in a statement the “poor performance” (sic) of its own management in controlling product stocks and expiration dates.

All ways…

The scandal escalated last Thursday when Capital Humano delivered forms to the Casanello court that not only revealed the collection of 5.9 million kilos of food, but also that there were 339,867 kilos of powdered milk that had expired in July and 40 kilos of rice with vegetables that had already expired. Given the evidence, Pettovello decided to blow up the Secretary of Children, Adolescents and Family, Pablo de la Torre, who was in charge of food security policy and had said that the stored food was for emergencies and disasters.

The ministry revealed that it had reported this to the Anti-Corruption Office (OA). allegations, which they agreed to Page 12is not related to stored and expired food, but to the disclosure of an agreement made with the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), part of the funds of which would have been used to pay officials who had not yet been appointed and bonuses for others. The “trap” is that for this regular agreements would have been used which are in fact for the external appointment of experts for specific projects.

Pettovello may not know it, but she could consider herself condemned. If the OA follows the path of the funds transferred to the OEI, it will find that on March 6 a resolution was published approving a complementary act to a cooperation agreement between the Secretariat of the Children and the International Organization, which orders the transfer of 6,772,500,000 pesos of public funds. That document, which was revealed by this newspaper, is signed only by the minister, despite the fact that State contract rules establish that if the figure exceeds 2.5 billion, the chief of staff must sign. The money in question would have several purposes. On the one hand, the contracts that would have been diverted and, on the other, as reported Page 12the purchase of food, for which Capital Humano handed over the bidding and acquisition of pulses and oil to the OEI in exchange for a 5% commission. Contrary to what the government said, not everything was acquired by the previous administration. Now this method is also being used to avoid local controls.

The complaint before the OA reveals that Federico Fernández, Director General of Administration of the Ministry of Children, declared in an internal investigation that he had witnessed a meeting where payments were planned to people who did not have appointments and that payments were planned, among others, to receive officials of that agency “with low remuneration”, deviating from their purpose in the agreements with the OEI. He gave the names of officials who are no longer there, he explained that with these contracts up to 1.3 million pesos could be invoiced, he said – always according to the document that the OA has in hand – that “the money that some consultants received was converted” to US dollars and that the “residue” was “given to Pablo de la Torre in dollars.” Finally he went on to clarify that “Sandra Pettovello was not aware of this irregular situation.”

The OEI issued a statement this week to distance itself from the anomalous situation, saying it is a multilateral cooperation organization with several agreements, including on human capital. They say that the purchase of food to improve “nutritional quality” resulted in a 40% savings and that commissions are a management expense. There is no mention of tenders. They said that in the provider contracts requested by the Secretary of Children, they only “execute” the decisions. And that the “cooperation budget for Argentina” is “more than 6,000,000,000.” This is the one that bears Pettovello’s signature.

So far, the minister had indicated, contrary to what the chief of staff Guillermo Francos later said: “The information he (Pettovello) provided about these foods in the warehouses did not include that some had expiration dates, such as in the case of the milk in powder. When he discovered that the powdered milk expired in July, he ordered its immediate distribution and took action with the officer in charge…” The distribution was only reported, but Judge Casanello was not informed of it. Will the head of Human Capital say that she did not even know about the agreement with the OEI? It is worth remembering that the distribution of food to soup kitchens was cut as soon as Javier Mieli took office, with the argument that irregularities were perceived and that they wanted to cast doubt on social organizations. This triggered protests in the summer and the “hunger dispute” in February. It was and is a much bigger issue than the current one.

Inspection at Villa Martelli

Paloma Ochoa, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the complaint made against Pettovello in February by leader Juan Grabois (Argentina Humana), asked Casanello to order a search of the Capital Humano warehouse located in Villa Martelli, where there are 2.7 million kilos of food. In an opinion she highlighted the issues that were striking in relation to the inventory distributed by the ministry: expired foods (milk in July, lentils in August and hay in September), food that had already expired (rice with vegetables), non-compliance after 72 hours with a distribution plan for what was collected and a statement of who assumed responsibilities. The government had appealed against the court order and a hearing will be held this Wednesday in Chamber II of the Federal Chamber.

“The state of affairs presented shows the unreliability of what is reported by the Ministry of Human Capital, a decentralized body of the federal public administration, which publicly questions its functioning; all of this gives full account of the gravity of the situation, in a context where the things discussed and testified in this summary have an impact on the health of the population,” the prosecution said.

The judge ordered a “subsidy search warrant” that was made this Saturday. An inspection was conducted to see how the police were able to enter without any trouble. The resolution that provided for the measure indicated that its purpose was to investigate a series of discrepancies – also noted by the Ochoa prosecutor’s office – since the information on the food, quantities and expiration dates did not match the information given to his office on May 28. On March 5, Walter Lara was sent to the Administrative Litigation Court of Correa, which is carrying out a process of collective protection for the same issue, and that arose as a result of a request for access to public information that the complaint had submitted on March 30 in April.

For example: the first two had 130,270 kilos of mixed oil, the last one nothing; wheat flour went from 18,380 kilos to 9,149 and then to zero; powdered milk increased from 415,432 kilos to 397,887 and finally to 389,351; locro was reduced by 1675 kilos; rice with meat by 1 kilo; tomato puree by 1,398, lentil stew by 568 kilos went to zero; 40 kilos of rice with vegetables ended up and 4,428 kilos of yerba mate disappeared. The judge explained that since April 30, only 37,500 kilos had been distributed in some provinces and that 65,169 kilos of oil and 1,380 of tomato puree had been moved from one warehouse to another. “If only the listed foods (nine) are taken into account, there is a huge difference which cannot be justified, even with the reported results,” the judge said.

They then decided that it was necessary to “verify the fidelity of the data relating to the stocks of food collected – and the expiration dates and condition.” “This claim of the prosecutor’s office and also the earlier complaint is supported by the elementary principle of responsibility and transparency which is linked with the right of access to public information,” they added. They asked to add information about brands, batches, quantities, dates of entry, intended destination (if applicable), trace other goods, books where the information is recorded, and record the features and condition of the goods on video and photographs. This process was carried out by the Argentine Federal Police’s anti-corruption investigation unit. The results are not yet known.

Tucuman

The Tafí Viejo warehouse contains approximately 2.2 million kilos of food. There, a separate investigation is being carried out, promoted by organizations registered in the Registry of Community Dining Rooms and Picnic Areas (RENACOM). The prosecutor in charge of it is Agustín Chit. At his request, Judge José Manuel Díaz Vélez, the day before, ordered a survey in the place, which he entrusted to the gendarmerie, since the complainants said that there was food stored there that was not being distributed to them on time. They found sunflower oil, mixed oils, lentils, chickpeas, powdered milk, tomato puree, peanut paste and yerba mate. There are approximately 2 million products ready to be distributed and approximately 600,000 products awaiting quality control authorization. There were no expired products.

Human Capital staff delivered documents in digital form about the goods, with entry and expiration dates. One of the officials, who would be a career official, gave no less important information to the investigators. He said that although there is no protocol that specifies when this or that food should be delivered, there are historical uses and customs marked by logic: among them, everything must be delivered at least 90 days before the expiration date (otherwise they return it). Nothing of what is stored in Taffy Viejo is in danger – for example – powdered milk must be delivered urgently, because it expires in September. If this same criterion were applied to the products of Villa Martelli, thousands of kilos would have to be discarded.

All this only confirms that the Miley government and its loyal Pettovello had the conviction to cut meals for popular neighborhood dining rooms and picnic areas – betting on disarming essential social organizations in support of the neighborhood – and what appears now is a show of excuses and contradictions that strip them naked – beyond the class hatred – that nothing is as transparent as they want to portray it.