Monday, April 20, 2015

CFK ties Alberto Nisman to ‘vulture’ funds

President says late prosecutor was working with holdouts to overturn Memorandum with Iran

Late AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was working alongside the holdout funds that are battling against Argentina in US courts, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said yesterday.

The president says Nisman was working with the “vulture” funds to try to stop the approval of a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, noting an alleged involvement of the Delegation For Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA) as part of a global political plan that meant national state sovreignty is threatened by vested interests.

In the text published online, Fernández de Kirchner appeared to draw direct links between the late federal prosecutor’s accusation that the president tried to whitewash the involvement of the alleged Iranian masterminds of the 1994 attack against the AMIA Jewish community centre, and the current legal dispute with the holdouts.

She also pointed to the connection between US think-tank and lobby group Foundation For Defence Of Democracies (FDD) and Nisman via the organization’s Executive Director Mark Dubowitz.

Citing an opinion piece published in Página 12 on Saturday by former DAIA director Jorge Elbaum, she highlighted the relationship Nisman and Dubowitz enjoyed, and FDD’s repeated lobbying of the US government in 2013. It condemned both Argentina’s position in the Vulture Funds dispute and the current administration’s policy towards Iran.

“If it’s necessary, Paul Singer will help us,” Nisman allegedly said in the text quoted by the president. Paul Singer is the head of Elliottt Management, one of the main funds legislating suing Argentina for the full value of defaulted debt.

In particular, the president examined the passage in the article that documented how groups lobbying on behalf of the Holdouts had repeatedly warned US Secretary of State John Kerry about the fall-out from the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) her administration brokered with Iran to form a Truth Commission to investigate the AMIA bombing in 1994, the country’s worst terrorist attack.

“You see, everything matches with everything,” she said.

A key quote

In the blog, posted as the president is set to begin an official trip to Russia, Fernández de Kirchner repeatedly pointed to the quote in which Nisman names Singer.

According to the Página 12 article Nisman uttered the words during meetings he held with prominent figures of the Jewish community, where he articulated his ambition to overturn the MOU President Kirchner’s government had signed with Iran by orchestrating his work on the AMIA case against the administration.

In tones matching those of recent times concerning the ongoing dispute between the government and the holdout funds, Fernández de Kirchner said the firms and their lobbyists represented an “international political operation” that jeopardzied national sovreignty.

“Sometimes their effects can be global on peace, such as preventing the possibility of an agreement between the US and other powers with Iran on nuclear energy, or on collateral matters as to make agreements impossible that could mean after 21 years we may have Truth and Justice for victims of the AMIA.”

Mentioning the recent breakthrough deal struck on April 2 after days of negotiations between the US, Iran and several other nations over Tehran’s nuclear programme, the president associated herself with Pope Francis’ words, as she did recently regarding the anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Francis has praised the nuclear pact, which he called “the first step toward a safer and more fraternal world.”

She said that Israel and Israeli President Netanyahu’s attempts to scupper the deal by lobbying US Congress were comparable to the holdouts lobbying of US opinion over the Memorandum. “Everything has to do with geopolitics and international power.”

The connection between Alberto Nisman and the holdout funds cited by Fernández de Kirchner is the foremost focus of the blog post.

Before his death in January this year, Nisman prepared a report to present to Congress that accused the president and her government of attempting to white wash Iranian culpability in the 1994 AMIA bombing. In February, Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas rejected the renewal of the accusations compiled by Nisman and taken on by prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita. The investigation has since been referred to the First Unit of the Federal Cassation Court, Argentina’s highest criminal court, which will now review whether to examine the accusations.

—Herald with online media