The Government made official this Monday the nomination of the future replacement of Carlos Cruz, who resigned in the midst of interns. This is Juan Carlos Otero is, according to government and opposition sources, an old acquaintance of Kirchnerism with a black palate and enjoys the confidence of the leader of La Cámpora, Máximo Kirchner.
At 46, after a long career in the National Securities Commission -where he gave repeated signs of loyalty to Kirchnerism-, This lawyer and the son of a trade unionist was chosen by the Alberto Fernández government to replace Carlos Cruz at the head of the Financial Information Unit (UIF), the anti-money laundering organization.
Before that, it must pass the stage of public hearings called by the Ministry of Economy and will seek to obtain the (non-binding) endorsement of Congress.
After acquaintance Cruz’s resignation, who had been elected by President Alberto Fernández at the beginning of his term, the government made the call for public hearings on Friday to begin the process of selecting his replacement. It is a key position. The FIU is in charge of asset control to prevent crimes associated with money laundering and illegal financing of terrorism.
According to the newspaper La Nación, curiously, the call for public hearings, which expires next Wednesday 10, was signed by the Minister of Transport, Alexis Guerrera, since the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, accompanies the President on his tour of Europe . Otero’s proposal, published today in the Official Gazette, was signed by the Secretary of Finance, Rafael Brigo, but from that ministry they avoided making further comments on the application.
Along with Cruz, it was also announced that Mariana Quevedo, the vice of the UIF, a body that is crossed by strong interns, would leave office.
Otero is not, by the way, an official who does not know the function, since he worked from the CNV in contact with José Sbatella, who was in charge of the FIU between 2010 and 2015. According to his own resume, after holding positions in the Justice and in the Superintendency of Labor Risk Insurers, in 2001 Otero began his career in the National Securities Commission, where he held, among other positions, the sub-managers of Common Investment Funds, Stock Exchanges , Markets and Securities Banks; and Money Laundering Prevention. There, according to sources linked to the entity, he led inspections of different banks that worked with the so-called “counted with liqui” as a way to get dollars in the last tranche of the second government of Cristina Kirchner.
In the recent past, Otero was appointed the CNV’s liaison officer with the Financial Information Unit (UIF) and later a compliance officer with that same body. Two months ago, by Decree No. 508/2021, he was appointed member of the Advisory Council of the UIF on behalf of the National Securities Commission.
According to the data published by the newspaper La Nación, Otero is a concurrent asset to the country Golfers, de Pilar, a Peronist and a “political animal” since always, Otero is a lawyer. He graduated from the UBA in 1999 and completed a postgraduate degree in “Update on the Prevention of Money Laundering”.
The Government recognizes that both the CNV and the FIU are “only in theory” autarkic entities without ties to political power. “All governments change the CNV’s board of directors, and those who do not comply with the directives tend to leave the FIU,” a current official and a man linked to the CNV agree, who in any case rescues the current head of the CNV as “reasonable”. that entity, Adrián Cosentino, a member of the economic team during the government of Cristina Kirchner but also that of Mauricio Macri, when Alfonso Prat-Gay was Minister of Economy.
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