Government official under fire over undeclared properties in Miami

An economy ministry official admitted he purchased seven apartments in Miami that he failed to register in Argentina for tax payment and that he also didn’t include them in the assets disclosure statement he is obliged to due to his role. The official in question is Carlos Frugoni, secretary of infrastructure coordination. The irregularities regarding his properties were revealed in journalistic investigations from channel A24 and newspapers Clarín and La Nación. At least two judicial complaints have been filed against him since the news broke on Thursday. This comes as Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni is facing accusations of illicit enrichment. The judiciary is investigating a set of undeclared properties and expenditures that may not match his declared income. According to La Nación investigative journalist Hugo Alconada Mon, Frugoni failed to declare at least five Miami properties before Argentine judiciaries. A24 reported that there could be another three. “I made a mistake” Frugoni admitted to purchasing seven apartments in Miami that he failed to mention in his asset statements, nor register before Argentina’s tax collection agency ARCA. “I made a mistake. I was rectifying this situation because I am now a public official,” Frugoni said, according to Clarín. Frugoni added that he is paying taxes for the properties in the United States and that he will now “start doing it in Argentina too.” Most of Frugoni’s Miami apartments were purchased between 2020 and 2022, when he was still head of AUSA. They are all priced between US$140,000 and US$310,000. Clarín reported that Frugoni admitted to also being the head of two limited companies based in Wyoming and Delaware, which he also failed to declare in Argentina: Genova LLC and Wiki LLC. La Nación stated that he purchased and currently manages the properties under those entities. Who is Carlos Frugoni Frugoni, a relatively unknown government figure, is in charge of two key areas: infrastructure and transport. He manages the bidding and concession processes of public works, and he also leads the decisions and negotiations regarding public transport, a delicate issue at the moment as bus companies are demanding more subsidies. He joined the government in August as head of National Commission of Transport Regulation. He has been in his current post since January. In Argentina, public officials have to declare their assets annually before the Anticorruption Agency. This includes their properties outside the country, as well as their participation in national and foreign companies. Although he attributed his failure to declare the properties to an honest mistake, this is not the first time Frugoni has been involved with public administration. He was head of Autopistas Urbanas Sociedad Anónima (AUSA), a company in charge of Buenos Aires highways owned 95% by the Buenos Aires City government, for eight years. Frugoni was in charge of the public works to build a highway known as Paseo del Bajo, inaugurated in 2019. He was one of the businessmen and public officials mentioned in a complaint for alleged bid-rigging and overpricing in a portion of the tender for the building of the highway. In August, the Office of Public Integrity in Buenos Aires City sanctioned and fined Frugoni for failing to file his assets disclosure statement that was pending from his time as head of AUSA. He was sanctioned again in March for the same reason.