Former Argentine president purchased aircraft unfit for flying

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In November 2017, Argentina -under the command of former president Mauricio Macri- announced with fanfare that it bought five used “Super Étendard” fighter jets modernized from the French National Navy for €12.6 million (US$13.3 million) and that the Minister of Defense Óscar Aguad celebrated as the “great purchase”, but this Thursday, June 9, it has been known that the planes are useless.

According to Télam, “Macri’s Government spent almost €14 million on aircraft that were not in a condition to be able to fly, as denounced by an audit of the Sindicatura General de la Nación (Sigen) released, which warned that the Ministry of Defense had preliminary reports that warned about the state of the aircraft.”

It should be recalled that in February 2016, Argentina itself vociferated and mocked Chile’s F-16s, pointing out that they could not fly: the Minister of Defense of Argentina, Julio Martinez, said in an interview: “There are aircraft that demand US$17,000 per flight hour. Chile has 24 F16s, but cannot fly them. We need an aircraft with an adequate cost,” asserted Macri’s minister.

The report – revealed by Télam, which was sent to the Anti-Corruption Office (OA) for an eventual initiation of actions, analyzed the acquisition, in 2017, of five aircraft by the Argentine Navy from the Government of France through an agreement signed by the then Minister of Defense, Óscar Aguad, and his peer of the Armed Forces of that country.

According to the audit, the aircraft “were not in flight conditions and their remaining potential was already quite weak, which is why the French Navy had stopped using them”.

Nevertheless, Aguad bought them “with their technical follow-up documentation and a lot of spare parts, test benches, test cases, mission equipment, tools, and a flight simulator”.

The final transfer price of all the materials -aircraft and complementary elements- was €12.6 million, and the payment was made in a single bank transfer, while another sum of just over €1 million was paid for the door-to-door transport service of the aircraft.

The audit also reports negative previous technical studies since, before the purchase, “several preliminary reports from the Argentine Navy were not taken into account, which warned about the need to guarantee certain spare parts before the transaction was finalized”.

“The documents pointed out that, in the conditions in which the aircraft were offered, they were not in a flying condition requiring the execution of a series of works to put them into operation,” said the Sigen.

The agency’s report captured the irregularities committed by the previous management throughout a 35-page document, referring to the purchases carried out by the Defense portfolio, in the period 2016-2019, under Aguad’s management.

In addition to the five combat aircraft, four OPV (Offshore Patrol Vessel) multipurpose ocean patrol vessels were acquired.

According to the report, the national government assumed all the costs of removal, transportation, and parking of the transferred materials. For that purpose, through Private Tender N° 005/17, the door-to-door transport service of the five aircraft plus all the complements was processed for €1.4 million, totaling the whole acquisition a figure close to €14 million.

With information from Infogate