Global Courant 2023-04-27 20:58:08
Cristina Kirchner’s favorite hotel, next to her residence in El Calafate, cannot be rented. The latest report from the judicial observers in the Kirchner family businesses details that despite the fact that last year there were efforts for a tourist company to open the doors of Los Sauces Casa Patagonica, no exploitation agreement was signed. The boutique complex has been closed for almost seven years and is still paying off municipal debts that it accumulated in recent years.
Cristina Kirchner touring the Los Sauces hotel. Photo Francisco Munoz. Yo
In 2021, the boutique hotel – unique due to its characteristics in El Calafate – was again managed by the Kirchner family, when the two judges who acquitted them without holding an oral trial in the case that investigated family businesses for alleged money laundering, raised judicial intervention that governed hotels and other properties.
At that time, Máximo Kirchner decided that the Los Sauces hotel would pass from the orbit of the Hotesur company to that of the Condominium that bears his name and that of his sister, where all the properties received as a result of the succession of Néstor Kirchner are located.
As a result of that decision, on May 16, 2022, the deputy and his sister granted a general power of administration to Matías Bezi, the former deputy from Santa Cruz and friend of Máximo Kirchner. He is the one who was mentioned in the messages from José López’s cell phone aired in the Highway trial, and that he acted as a link with Cristina’s son to decide on some tenders.
That Commercial Exploitation agreement with the Condominium and the company Los Sauces SA resolved that the Condominium “may celebrate the agreements it deems necessary for the purpose of ceding the commercial exploitation (totally or partially) of the Hotel Los Sauces Casa Patagónica, without Los Sauces SA may oppose or intervene in said assignment.” When an exploitation agreement is closed with a company dedicated to tourism, the Condominium will pay Los Sauces SA 15 percent of the net monthly rental value agreed with future tenants.
When the AFIP observers asked the administrator of the Kirchner family companies, Sebastián Sánchez, about the situation of the boutique hotel, he replied that it is still unoccupied.
The report says that in June of last year the administrator was in talks with hotel operators “for the purpose of granting the establishment, not having reported any news to date.”
Hotel Los Sauces has been closed since 2016. Photo: Francisco Muñoz
There was an attempt to reopen the expensive hotel. At the time, Clarín recounted that a series of emails were exchanged where the businessmen expressed their interest in doing so to a local real estate agency. The firm was Hotelera Patagonia SAS, which set foot in El Calafate in 2019 when it began to operate another Kirchner tourist complex: Las Dunas.
Whoever decides to operate the boutique hotel must first resolve some procedures in the municipality of El Calafate: the last court inspector had informed the federal court that there were debts for services supplied to the complex in previous years with State Public Services Society for 605,745 pesos , and with Distrigas 441,195 pesos. Given the figure – which adding the unpaid municipal taxes yields a value of 1,146,940 pesos – the intervention managed a moratorium.
The “financial leverage”
When the accountant Víctor Manzanares, custodian of the numbers of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner’s assets for decades, declared that he was sorry in the cause of the Notebooks, he said that the hotel functioned as the “main financial leverage in the increase of the Kirchners’ assets.” He explained that the administration of the complex “had the highest levels of rental values, but less occupancy and fewer rooms.”
The former vice accountant revealed that for eleven years 90,000 dollars a month were paid for his rent, adding that “this contract meant a sum of between 10 and 11 million dollars of white income to the Kirchner economy.”
View of the La Aldea hotel owned by the Kirchner family, under construction since 2016. Chalten, Santa Cruz. (Maxi Faila)
Another hotel closed and lack of funds
The report presented before the Federal Oral Court 5 (TOF 5) reported another tourist complex that remains closed.
The Administrator, Sebastian Sánchez, reported the following about this hotel located in the town of El Chaltén: “Regarding Hostería La Aldea, it is deteriorated and not operational, with the impossibility of making improvements due to lack of funds in society, for which It is intended to outsource it for its repair and subsequent exploitation without progress to date.”
This complex, which was managed by Lázaro Báez until 2013, was closed more than seven years ago and belongs to the Los Sauces SA real estate company, which admits to having only 300,000 pesos in its bank account and various properties that have been trespassed and others that cannot be rented.
The value that justice attributed to this mountain hotel is 108,413,000 pesos. Its expansion work was unfinished and has remained in that state for years. The last administrator was IDEA SA, owned by Osvaldo Sanfelice, a key man in the Kirchner family business.
