Argentina’s Human Capital Ministry was given 24 hours to present a plan for delivering food sitting in government warehouses on Wednesday by Buenos Aires City’s Federal Court. On the same day, federal prosecutor Ramiro González opened a separate investigation into an alleged embezzlement scheme in the ministry, with irregular employment contracts signed through the Ibero-American States Organization (OEI, by its Spanish acronym).
Two weeks ago, the news website El Destape published that 5,000 tonnes of food were sitting in two government warehouses. Social leader Juan Grabois filed a complaint against Human Capital Minister Sandra Pettovello in February for not delivering food to soup kitchens and, in May, requested an ocular inspection of the warehouses.
On May 24, prosecutors Andrés Nazer and María Paloma Ochoa gave a five-day deadline for the ministry to deliver the food to the registered soup kitchens and demanded precise information on the stash in a ruling signed by Casanello. The ministry appealed days later.
However, on Wednesday, the city’s federal court’s judges Martín Irurzun, Eduardo Guillermo Farah, and Roberto José Boico unanimously rejected the ministry’s arguments for the appeal in a 38-page ruling. The ministry claimed that........