Lázaro Báez
| Lázaro Báez | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Lázaro Báez February 11, 1951 Corrientes |
| Occupation | businessman. |
Lázaro Báez (born February 11, 1951 in Corrientes, Argentina) is an Argentine businessman who is a central figure in the corruption scandals, known as the The Route of the K-Money, surrounding former Argentine Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The case was also known as Lázarogate.
Báez became a friend of Kirchner in 1991, and in 2003 founded a construction company, Austral Construcciones, which was awarded many government contracts during Kirchner's presidency. In 2011 Báez built Kirchner's mausoleum. He has been called the main beneficiary of public contracts in Patagonia.
Báez was born in 1951 in San Luis del Palmar, Corrientes, Argentina, to a family of Peronists. His family moved to Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, in 1962. The move was reportedly occasioned by political persecution, his father having apparently had to leave his home province following the coup against President Arturo Frondizi.
In 1984 he married Norma Beatriz Calismonte, who worked as tutor assistant in a public secondary school.
After completing high school, in 1980, he began his first job, as an office junior at a local branch of a National Bank. He then served as a sergeant in the army. In 1985, he started working at his second job, as a teller at the provincial state Bank of Santa Cruz. In 1990 he established a relationship with Néstor Kirchner by means of leaked bank accounts data Báez offered to Kirchner. Kirchner was at the time serving his last year as mayor of Río Gallegos and beginning a crucial campaign for governor, a position he would end up holding from 1991 to 2003. Báez then became bank assistant manager.
Báez formed Austral Construcciones S.A. in 2003, and within three months the firm's capital rose from $AR12,000 to $AR500,000. Former Santa Cruz prosecutor Andrés Vivanco said in May 2013 that Báez "was previously just a bank employee who has no legal way of justifying his increased fortune... Everything Lázaro Báez has come from Néstor Kirchner. He previously had nothing; he was not an entrepreneur because he never risked his capital, he would always just wait to submit a public tender with the government".
...
Wikipedia