Chief organizer of Macri's "mini Davos" is among those listed in the Panama Papers offshore scandal
Moroccan businessman Richard Attias, who organized the Argentina Business & Investment Forum at the behest of Argentine President Mauricio Macri, was revealed by the Paris news daily Le Monde to be among those listed in the international Panama Papers scandal this April. Attias' "The Experience," a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, was active between January 2010 and November 2014.
Touted as a "mini Davos" on account of the large number of international corporate executives and lobbyists in attendance, the forum was reportedly conceived by Attias during a meeting with Macri during the last Davos summit in January. The forum, held in Buenos Aires' Kirchner Cultural Center on September 11-15, is being attended by around 1,900 guests from 65 countries.
The cost of the four-day event, financed at Argentine taxpayer expense, has not been disclosed.
Attias is listed as one of the principals in holding companies in Delaware, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and the Cayman Islands. A registered corporate lobbyist in France, Attias, according to Le Monde, currently lives with Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (ex-wife of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy) and has enjoyed direct access to diverse international figures such as Bill Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates, and, until his death, Yasser Arafat.
Confronted with being a former client of disgraced corporate law firm Mossack Fonseca, Attias justified his use of offshore accounts as a way to avoid "stifling taxes" but nevertheless explained that "I had no business with the company (his offshore firm "The Experience"
. It was dissolved, plain and simple."
President Macri, one of five current heads of government listed in the Panama Papers, gave a similar response when the scandal broke in April.
Macrieconomic obstacles
The right-wing Macri administration has made attracting more foreign investment a top policy priority, and around $18 billion has been pledged thus far in 2016. Foreign direct investment in Argentina, however, declined in the first quarter of 2016 (the latest available data) by 26.1% to $1.8 billion as a shock devaluation, sharp hikes in rates and fares, and other austerity policies have taken their toll in Latin America's third largest economy.
Led by a collapse in construction of 23.1%, fixed investment as a whole (spending on structures and equipment) has fallen by 9.6% as of June; real GDP, according to official INDEC figures, has fallen by 4.3% and unemployment has reached a ten-year high of 9.3%.
Budget deficits - a key campaign issue last year - declined somewhat initially; but since May have been running at twice the already-record levels in 2015, averaging 36 billion pesos ($2.4 billion) a month.
One bright spot was inflation, with data released today by INDEC showing a 0.2% monthly rate for August. A Supreme Court ruling on August 18 striking down Macri's natural gas rate hikes of around 400% for having been decreed without a public hearing (as required by law) pushed housing related costs down 5.6%; core inflation slowed slightly to 1.7%, roughly in line with the average monthly rate over the last decade.
Inflation, which Macri described in his keynote address as "tame," nevertheless remained at 43.5% in August; real wages were recently estimated by the Social Security Agency to have fallen by 11%.
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