Ariel Pedro Zanchetta, former federal police officer, in a picture circulated on social networks.
An investigation into a former police officer jailed for five months for spying on two judges has uncovered a large-scale illegal surveillance operation in Argentina. According to prosecutors, Ariel Pedro Zanchetta, a former federal agent who worked in the police for 25 years, monitored a thousand public figures, including President Alberto Fernández, collecting private data and creating folders containing personal information for the two candidates his successor, another 50 frontline civil servants, judges, journalists, social leaders, trade union leaders, sports leaders and artists. Zanchetta was arrested at the end of June last year for involvement in the hacking of the phones of two Supreme Court justices. This week the public prosecutor’s office requested an extension of the investigation against him because of suspicions that the former police officer worked for several years as an undeclared agent of the state secret service during the government of former President Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015).
Less than two weeks before Argentines elect their next president in the second round on November 19, the conspiracy has exploded. And it has tainted the Peronism that hopes to stay in government. According to federal prosecutors’ investigations, Zanchetta had ties to two Peronist officials close to Kirchner: a national MP and a current director of the State Tax Agency (AFIP), who was one of the leaders of the La Cámpora group, the most loyal militants to the former president.
To the deputy Rodolfo Tailhade, Zanchetta offered to send him a conversation between judges, prosecutors, media directors and politicians who opposed Peronism and discussed how to spread a false version in order to answer the complaint about gifts related to one of them to counteract the paid trip to Patagonia. . It happened last December when Cristina Kirchner was awaiting sentencing for corruption. Several local media outlets published the news, which gave Kirchner an opportunity to speak out against the alleged political use of justice against him. The deputy involved defended this Wednesday morning that he had received the offer from Zanchetta but that the leak had already been public when the news reached him. “I don’t have the slightest idea who he is, I never asked him for information, I never bought anything from him,” the deputy said in a radio interview. “One time I answered the phone because I was told he was a journalist,” he added.
Zanchetta, who according to the investigation left his work for the Federal Intelligence Service sometime in 2015, presented himself as a journalist and published part of the information he collected in a digital medium that focused on local information from Junín, a small town in the region, concentrated province of Buenos Aires, three hours’ drive from the capital. This trail has further complicated the other politician involved. According to the public prosecutor’s office, Zanchetta “reported” Néstor Fabián Rodríguez, who before working at the tax authority was undersecretary for media coordination in the province of Buenos Aires. Rodríguez, prosecutors said, asked Zanchetta to investigate current Social Development Minister Victoria Tolosa Paz and paid her with public money disguised as advertising space on her website. Rodríguez’s home and office were searched this Tuesday and around twenty computers and telephones were confiscated.
Zanchetta had information on opposition politicians such as Patricia Bullrich, former presidential candidate from former President Mauricio Macri’s party; Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, outgoing mayor of Buenos Aires and presidential candidate; the governor of the northern province of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, the deputy Elisa Carrió, one of the opposition leaders; and the far-right Javier Milei, candidate for the November 19 presidential election. But he also had many Peronists in his portfolio: from the presidential candidate and Minister of Economy Sergio Massa and the current president Fernández to the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, and the social leader and presidential candidate Juan Grabois and even Máximo Kirchner, son of the former president, national MP and leader of La Cámpora.
“Massa is spying on us with the AFIP,” denounced Patricia Bullrich on her social networks. Milei, who adopted her as an ally in the second round of presidential elections, shared her message and presented herself as a plaintiff in the case. Peronism has remained silent, but some voices have already come forward denouncing the “opportunism” of the revelation about the end of the election campaign. “I still don’t understand how that can be [ por kirchnerista] “A spy who spies on the K more than the non-K, and how can a spy who spies on the main leader of La Cámpora be hired by La Cámpora,” complained Juan Grabois online. “What is clearer than water is that the judiciary, the armed forces and the intelligence services are being sold to the highest bidder.”