José Luis Espert, the economist who made a political career out of the slogan “cárcel o bala” (“jail or bullet”), is entangled in a web wrong-footing him against his own discourse. Documents and testimony link him to Federico Andrés ‘Fred’ Machado, an Argentine entrepreneur wanted in the United States in relation to court proceedings involving suspected drug-trafficking and fraud.

This case originated in Texas, where Machado faces trial together with his partner Debra Lynn Mercer-Erwin, who was sentenced last year to 16 years in prison on similar charges: drug-trafficking, money-laundering and fraud. Among the accounts confiscated by the prosecutors there appears a money order dated February 1, 2020: a transfer of US$200,000 made out in Espert’s name.

The money had been paid out by the Aircraft Guarantee Corp, a trust administered by Mercer-Erwin, identified as a cover for registering aircraft and – according to the charges in the United States – covering up a scheme of fraud and the contraband of cocaine disguised as transactions for the purchase and sale of aircraft.

Machado has been under house arrest in Viedma awaiting extradition to the United States, which has just been authorised by Argentina’s Supreme Court.

Never declared

The problem for Espert is that he never declared this contribution either before Argentina’s Electoral Court or in public. And nor is this an isolated incident – journalistic reconstruction of his 2019 presidential campaign shows Machado to be his chief financier.

Apart from money, the businessman also supplied logistics: a private jet used by the candidate and an armoured Grand Cherokee jeep registered in the name of a cousin, Cl