Buenos Aires, Argentina — Javier Milei is not heading into the election season like he’d hoped. Amid an economic crisis that pushed him to seek help from the U.S. Treasury and falling poll numbers, Argentina’s president is facing a fresh corruption scandal within his La Libertad Avanza political party.
José Luis Espert, the party’s candidate for the House of Representatives in the Buenos Aires province, allegedly received $200,000 in 2020 from a man currently under investigation for possible links to drug trafficking. The payment is registered on documents held by federal courts in Texas, according to investigations by El DiarioAr and Perfil.
Espert, a 63-year-old economist, is currently a member of Argentina’s lower house of Congress, running for a second term as the main candidate of La Libertad Avanza in the Buenos Aires province.
While running for president in 2019 as an independent, Espert was lent a private jet and an armored truck by Federico Andrés “Fred” Machado, a 57-year-old Argentine entrepreneur who lived in the United States during the 1990s and is under investigation for ties to drug traffickers in Guatemala, according to La Nación.
While the alleged connection to Machado was previously known and used against him by his politcal rivals, the multi-hundred thousand dollar payment, which was mentioned in a U.S. court document, is a new and potentially damaging revelation.
Espert admitted the connection in a six-minute video posted on X, saying the payment was part of his “private activity” as an economist. The candidate said he met Machado in 2019, when the entrepreneur offered to help promote the economist’s then-latest book, A Complicit Society, in his hometown of Viedma in Patagonia.
“He offered to take me on his plane. I accepted and thanked him publicly,” Espert said. Machado “was one of the many who helped in the 2019 campaign,” he added.
Regarding the $200,000 payment, Espert said he was hired as an economic adviser to the Guatemalan mining company Minas del Pueblo (“Mines of the People”) after his failed presidential run. The payment was made even though he could not complete the job because he was unable to travel due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“One of the conditions I set was that the $200,000 payment be made exclusively by transfer from another bank that was also in the United States, so the operation would be completely transparent,” Espert said, praising U.S. anti-money-laundering measures.
Espert said he “never received funds that were not duly justified” or “that one could even suspect of illicit origin.” He added, “I may have sinned by being naive, but never as a criminal,” attributing the allegations to dirty campaigning by rivals.
According to the Argentine newspaper La Nación, Minas del Pueblo was part of a pyramid scheme led by Machado, who is under house arrest in Viedma while awaiting extradition to the United States. The company was also accused of operating without an official mining license in Guatemala.
Espert’s explanation, posted after 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, was met with disbelief by opposition leaders and journalists, and with lukewarm support from libertarians.
President Milei was one of the few who backed his message. In an X post, he accused the opposition of being “covered in corruption allegations, and like any other thief they believe everyone is as much of a thief as them.”
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The president was and remains the sole supporter of Espert’s candidacy, amid an already convoluted list-building process. The economist was chosen as the first candidate for his relationship with Milei, despite never having won an election and over objections from his sister, Karina Milei, the powerful secretary to the president known as “The Boss.”
Libertarian leaders proposed removing Espert from the ballot due to the corruption allegations, an idea Milei has so far resisted. The economist is also running in the Peronist-dominated Buenos Aires Province, where libertarians were defeated in the September local elections by a 13-point margin.
Read more: Javier Milei’s political party suffers first major electoral defeat in Argentina
Even if his candidacy were withdrawn, Espert would remain on the ballot, since Argentina is debuting a single paper ballot system this year and reprinting would cost millions. As a result, Espert remains a candidate, though he has not appeared on the campaign trail for the past week.
Opposition leaders are also pushing to remove Espert from his post as chair of the House Budget Committee, a key role in the upcoming debate over the 2026 budget. Another group of lawmakers is seeking to expel the economist from the chamber altogether, citing “moral incapacity.”
Espert is holding on to his candidacy despite rumors of his removal circulating over the past week. On the night of Oct. 3, as some journalists reported he was stepping down, he denied the claims. “Hi, Edu,” he wrote in a post on X, replying to news anchor Eduardo Feinmann. “I’m not stepping down at all. See you Monday on your A24 show. Cheers.”
Featured image credit:
Image: José Luis Espert and Javier Milei on the campaign trail
Author: José Luis Espert on Instagram
Source: José Luis Espert on Instagram
