Julio Nudler, the first journalist to denounce Alberto Fernandez's business dealings in the insurance underworld

In Clarín and in social networks it was recalled this week that the late journalist Julio Nudler was the first one in 2004 to expose the insurance business in which former President Alberto Fernández was involved due to his management as head of the National Insurance Superintendency during Carlos Menem's presidency.

How was the insurance and reinsurance business for the State? The former Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo appointed the economist from Salta Roberto Guzmán as head of the National Reinsurance Institute (INDER) in order to liquidate it because it was one of the "nests of corruption".

Guzmán was INDER's liquidator between 1994 and 1996 and had a series of frictions with Alberto F., who was in charge of the Superintendence.

Then, Cavallo hired former prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and his partner Hugo Wortman Jofre to investigate corruption in INDER. They filed a criminal complaint, but years later it ended up closed in the Comodoro Py courts amid allegations of arrangements with judges on the part of officials and businessmen investigated in a million-dollar swindle of INDER.

Even when he was fired by Menem from the Economy, Cavallo continued supporting Guzmán and even wrote a prologue for his book "Saqueo Asegurado, la corrupción en el negocio de los seguros y el caso Salta" (Assured Pillage, corruption in the insurance business and the Salta case) published in 1997. The book was introduced as evidence in the criminal case.

In that introduction, the former minister states that INDER was "one of the organizations most invaded by corruption and business deals in hyper-regulated Argentina". He assured that after two years of operation of a Liquidation Commission of INDER -before Guzmán's administration- "the apparent debt of the organization had quadrupled".

Cavallo said that Guzmán "was perplexed when he told us (in 1996) that he was astonished by the stagnation of judicial cases full of condemnatory evidence, enough to put behind bars a good number of officials, lobbyists and public officials of great renown".

Guzman reveals in the book in detail how the "trial industry" against INDER worked and gives as an example a car crash in La Rioja in 1983, where the victim was paid 14,000 dollars and the lawyers and experts -linked to a Menemist official- who intervened ended up being paid 1,400,000 dollars.

In 2004, the late journalist Julio Nudler, tried to publish in Página 12 the article entitled "Puppets and Puppeteers" due to the appointment of Claudio Moroni in the General Audit Office of the Nation (Sigen), Alberto Fernández's right hand man. The K newspaper lifted the article because it described an alleged "business network" between Moroni and Alberto Fernández when both were number one and two in the Superintendence of Insurance of the Nation. On the other hand, the censorship of Nudler was the key reason for the dissolution of the group Periodistas that same year.

According to Nudler -who denounced censorship by the pro-government newspaper and was cynically criticized by the K journalist Horacio Verbitsky-, Alberto and Moreno pressured Guzmán between 1994 and 1996, so that "he would recognize a debt with the insurance sector of 1,200 million dollars, when later Guzmán himself proved that it was only 500 million". Fernandez denied the accusation.

On November 16, 2004, Nudler replied to the K journalist and wrote "The extensive note by political commissar Horacio Verbitsky in the Sunday edition of Página/12 confirms, unfortunately, his moral degradation, already perhaps without possible redemption. Too many years of rinsing dirty laundry and publishing sewage!"

"Being able to be a good journalist, even brilliant, he opted for permanent political manipulation, in the worst sense. He has long been unwisely deceiving his readers if he thinks it benefits someone he advocates for, never revealing his true motives. In function of I don't know what political operations, he now assumes the role of defender of two sinister characters, in this case Alberto Fernández (Chief of Cabinet) and Claudio Moroni (General Trustee of the Nation), henchmen of each other", he added.

"That is also why my situation of censured has experienced a rise: now I am an outlaw. Not only was a note of mine thrown in the trash: then I was stripped of the column and of any other space from which I could again denounce the corruption of Kirchner's government. HV says nothing about this either, but he chooses to publish my old column, which everyone already knows about thanks to the Internet, thus becoming a sort of second-hand Verbitsky/12.Thank you, comrade Horacio, for your unwavering commitment to freedom of expression! How can politicking lead to so much mental derangement?", he added with irony.

Then he highlighted "meanwhile, HV refers to his failed meetings with the management and journalistic leadership of Página/12 in irreproducible terms, concluding that these are people with whom any dialogue is impossible. But as if to leave no doubt about their baseness, HV states that my denunciation "was a moving cry of despair and farewell", thus extending to me the death certificate due to the cancer I suffer from."

"However, and at his suggestion, I had just taken an appointment with his wife, Dr. Müller, a homeopath, which he recommended - in the same visit I made to him on Thursday at his request - to improve my general condition and moderate any side effects of the chemotherapy. As a precaution, and without implying any judgment as to the doctor's competence and professional conduct, I have just cancelled my appointment. I had the fantasy that it was Horacio Verbitsky who was prescribing me the drugs, and I was startled," concluded Nudler, who was editor of Clarín, Somos magazine and Página 12, as well as a tango expert. Nudler passed away the following year.