THE K REGIME AND BARRICK GOLD
In order to exploit the most important South American gold mine, the binational project of Pascua Lama, the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold made the most of the direct influence of its godfather George Herbert Walker Bush and the mafia network of Argentine and Chilean leaders, bankers prosecuted for fraud and academics bribed to falsify reports on the environmental impact.
Thanks to senior Bush, the former Argentine President Carlos Saúl Menem and the Chilean President, Eduardo Frei Ruiz Table, signed in 1997 the Mining Integration and Complementation Treaty, the hidden goal of which was to obtain the water they could no longer get from the Chilean side for Pascua’s pit.
The following Argentine governments kept on violating different laws to allow Barrick, which was founded by Peter Munk with money from the arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and involved in the Iran-Contras scandal, to build a cross-border mining empire that would cover an area of 260 thousand acres. This area includes Pascua Lama and Veladero mines —which are already being exploited— and some other unknown projects.
It is an out of control territory located at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Andes Mountains, under “Barrick’s dominion”, the company accused of being the “front” of the CIA in the scandal arms for drugs used to finance the anti-Sandinist movement in the 80’s.
In a definite “I accuse” style, and gathering irrefutable evidence along 450 pages, the journalist and writer Miguel Bonasso proves —among many others— that the President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Secretary of Treasury, Juan Carlos Pezoa, have infringed tax laws (Income taxes and VAT) and something more serious: they have declined the basic right of any State to collect taxes, for the benefit of Barrick.
He also proves what he has already presented in court: that the Argentine Mining Secretary, Jorge Mayoral, has incompatible links with the Canadian mining company, as well as the governor of San Juan, José Luis Gioja, and his brother César Gioja, who presided the Senate’s Mining Committee while his firm, Bentonitas Santa Gema S.A., was proudly claimed as a “Barrick’s supplier”.
Among the several laws in breach, it should be highlighted the Defense Law, the Environmental Law and a great number of international treaties, such as the Unesco Convention for the protection of resources, as the mining project is located within the Biosphere Reserve of San Guillermo.
What is worse, Barrick legislates in Argentina: it was behind the presidential veto of the glaciers’ law and has prevented this law —which was reinstated in Congress—, despite the pro-government opposition, to be applied in the province of San Juan.
The author of this bold research, Miguel Bonasso, is an Argentine deputy, the president of the Natural Resources and Human Environment Conservation Committee and was, precisely, the leader of the movement for the protection of the glaciers and periglacial areas by the first worldwide law in this subject.
Bonasso, who has also written several classics for the investigative journalism such as Recuerdo de la muerte, Don Alfredo, and El president que no fue, answers in this book a dozen of decisive questions about the perverse relationship between the economic and the political powers:
-Businesses of the Bush family.
-Businesses of the Kirchner family and the Gioja family.
-Barrick’s role in the sale of arms to Iran.
-Real influence of dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
-Relationship between Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Michele Bachelet and Rockefeller’s banking.
-Crimes carried out during the secret agreement between Argentina and Chile.
-Hidden deaths in the Andes.
-Keys of the Third Country.
-Glacier destruction in Pascua Lama and Veladero.
-Relationship between Menem and the Kirchners as regards the neocolonial handing over and sacking of Argentina.
