The scandal unleashed in Río Negro by the falsification of endorsements for the registration of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) as a political party in that province laid bare the plot of a business and political dynasty closer to criminal cases than to a proclaimed renewal of politics, which they claim to embody.
In the center of this network, the national representative from Rio Negro, María Lorena Villaverde, was under the spotlight, entangled in criminal cases, dead people coming back to life, complaints of fraud against a neighborhood club, piracy of the asphalt with electoral ballots, boxers affiliated en masse to a party that they are unaware of and use for their own benefit by national State agencies.
The setback that revealed what should have remained hidden was the rush to obtain recognition of the LLA in Río Negro. The rush was such that in a judicial hearing via Zoom, Deputy Villaverde brought the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, to endorse the presentation and urge the judge to register the match, whose launch should have been days ago with the presence of the presidential sister, Karina Milei.
The maneuvers were originally revealed by the newspaper Five Jumps a Dayand later confirmed by the former vice president of the Promotion Board of that extreme right-wing formation, Ariel Zuñiga, now repentant and holding Villaverde responsible for these and other border irregularities with crime.
Zuñiga reported having been removed from his position because the collection of guarantees was very slow, and in three months he had only achieved 1,300 of the 2,349 necessary. In the week following his dismissal, a thousand new endorsements suddenly appeared, of which at least 500, and increasing, are judicially challenged.
There are at least five people there who have been dead for years but still signed, a group of 70 boxers who swear they never registered, as well as dozens of fruit workers from the Upper Rio Negro Valley. Added to this is a still indefinite number of teachers and retirees that grows every day as the first verifications are carried out.
At this point begin the entanglements embodied in a case filed in the Federal Justice for theft of personal data, falsification of public documents, fraud and illicit association, in which, for example, the representative of the party in formation, Jonathan O’Rourke, He signs the recognition of the falsified tokens and at the same time sponsors the party in the judicial process.
The boxers, according to the complaints, arrived with a signature and ID through the president of the Río Negro Boxing Federation, Celeste Ventureyra, co-owner of a used car agency in Bariloche, recently appointed head of the local Anses and a reference for Villaverde in that city. Last Monday the 10th, the Argentine Box Federation removed Ventureyra from office due to her participation in this scandal.
The fruit workers, the complaints continue, arrived at the hands of the representative O’Rourke, who is a lawyer for the union and head of the Anses of General Roca, the largest city in the province. The leader of that union, the neo-Pentecostal pastor Marcos Bielma, also close to the far-right LLA like many others from that religious group, was present at his inauguration. Previously, O’Rourke had been the representative and leader of the FE party, owned by the deceased head of the rural laborers’ union, Jerónimo Benegas (alias Momo).
The origin of ghost retirees is easier to establish. Your personal data and ID can only come from the Anses and PAMI offices in Río Negro, whose delegations are a virtual political property of Congresswoman Villaverde. She personally puts the heads of the delegations in charge, all of them from her group, as if she were an authority of the Ministry of Human Capital instead of a legislator. And she promotes it generously on her media and social networks.
In Justice
The scandal of false affiliations is processing two judicial files. The party’s registration is in the electoral court of Hugo Greca, who graciously suspended the process this week, allowed LLA to remove the falsified tokens and gave them 30 days to submit new ones. Greca ran for a position in the Federal Chamber of General Roca and is awaiting his appointment.
The investigation of possible crimes committed in that process with the falsification of affiliations was left to the federal prosecutor’s office in charge of Marcos Escandell.
The judicial corridors are not unknown territory for national representative María Lorena Villaverde, who is familiar with criminal cases and even raids in money laundering investigations.
Villaverde is a 50-year-old local businesswoman who is influential on the Rio Negro coast, where she owns a small media chain, an advertising and marketing company, tourist complexes with gastronomic services, urbanizations and real estate businesses in general.
With a high public profile, before immersing himself in the electoral dispute with a far-right party, he led the Las Grutas Social and Sports Club, the spa in his hometown of San Antonio Oeste. But something went wrong because the club’s current board of directors filed a criminal complaint against her for irregularities in the balance sheets and financial status, and because she carried out a mega-raffle where the jackpot prize was a lot owned by the club. She did it without consulting the partners and without supervision of the Provincial Lottery. Strangely, the first prize in that raffle that hundreds of neighbors bought and no one controlled was left vacant.
Neighbors consulted by Argentinian time They assure that this setback influenced the failure of her first electoral foray, as a candidate for mayor of San Antonio Oeste for a far-right formation, where she barely garnered 9% of the votes in the provincial elections of April 2023. Last October, she already on the ballot with the face and name of Javier Milei, he came in second place with 31% of the votes.
Another case that involves her was the armed robbery of electoral ballots that occurred in October 2023 on Route 22, when the now repentant Ariel Zuñiga assaulted the truck of an internal opponent of Villaverde in the middle of the road to strip him of 200 thousand ballots. . Everything was filmed by Zuñiga’s victim. The former lieutenant, now in the role of his enemy, declared that he did it at the direction of the deputy.
But the most resonant of her judicial problems took place in 2018, when a battalion of the Federal Police raided the house she shared in San Antonio Oeste with her now ex-husband, José María Clemant, in a money laundering case being carried out by the judge. federal Luis Rodríguez. His partner was then president of the block of councilors of his city for the party Together We Are Río Negro (JSRN), of Governor Alberto Weretilneck.
Clemant argued days later that the operation had been a mistake because the Police had mistaken the address, the same as in three others that occurred simultaneously in three companies commercially linked to the firm “Ele V Comunicación”, owned by Deputy Villaverde. The newspaper Black river He cited police and judicial sources to affirm that there was no error in the addresses of the raids.
At that time, in a relationship and in a business partnership with Villaverde, Clemant was (and is) a radio host and third-line leader of JSRN, who became Secretary of Tourism and Environment of the town of Sierra Grande. He had his greatest political role 25 years earlier, when he was a Peronist and personal advisor to the late former Rio Negro senator Remo Constanzo, involved in the Senate bribery case known as the “Banelco Law.”
These days, Congresswoman Villaverde faces not only judicial cases, but also the enmity of her intimates: her repentant former right-hand man Ariel Zuñiga fires her accusations from the radio programs she hosts.
