Argentine President Mauricio Macri and top protégé, Néstor Grindetti, charged in Panamá Papers case. [View all]

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Argentine Prosecutor Martín Niklison has filed charges against President Mauricio Macri and a top political protégé, Lanús Mayor Néstor Grindetti, over allegations of hiding offshore companies when they were both officials in the Buenos Aires municipal government. The charges are based on proof that emerged recently as part of the international Panamá Papers scandal.

Prosecutor Estela Andrades presented a separate motion to Federal Judge Sebastián Casanello that this probe be unified with the already existing investigation into President Macri's participation in the Mossack Fonseca offshore shell company scheme. Between the Panamá Papers and Open Corporate leaks, Macri's name has been found in at least nine such accounts.

Lanús Mayor Néstor Grindetti, a former municipal finance minister during Macri's tenure as mayor, was listed on Interpol records as “wanted by the judicial authorities of Brazil for prosecution” for alleged “crimes against the tax authorities and consumer relations.” Grindetti's spokesman dismissed the charges, sending journalists an excerpt of a ruling issued on April 21 that cleared him from all charges related to a case titled “Pablo Tomás Boero and others.”

The Boero ruling, however, confirmed that Grindetti had an international arrest order issued by a court in Curitiba, Brazil, and that the order was active from December 14, 2012, until March 30, 2016. Carlos Gonella, head of the PROCELAC money laundering prosecutor's office, petitioned Judge Casanello to open a probe against Grindetti for “malicious omission of data.”

According to the documents released to the ICIJ, the Mossack Fonseca law firm helped Grindetti establish a shell company known as Mercier International in July 2010. Two weeks later, he opened an account at the Switzerland-based bank Clariden Leu AG. This bank is connected to Credit Suisse, which received a commission in the sale of Tango 8 municipal bonds issued by the city that year.

Opposition Buenos Aires City legislators have called for an investigation into whether Grindetti used his offshore accounts to receive kickbacks from the issue of Tango 8 bonds, and whether they were also used to finance Macri's right-wing PRO party.

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/213250/panam%C3%A1-papers-another-accusation-against-macri-and-grindetti