After the AFIP survey regarding the beneficiaries of the social programs Empower Work, the Minister of Social Development, Victoria Tolosa Paz, today rejected “the stigmatization of the most vulnerable sectors of Argentina” after the complaint filed by federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan in which he asks that social plans be suspended to beneficiaries who did not comply with rules that regulate them.
“The powers are clear, and the president has delegated to the minister the design and implementation of social policies and it would be unprecedented for a prosecutor to design or define a social policy,” said Tolosa Paz.
At the same time, the official indicated that the Empower Work plan “is in full force” and added: “We are going to comply with the transparency rules that this program must have, because they are public resources.” However, the official clarified that “we are far from seeking the stigmatization of the most vulnerable sectors of Argentina.” The minister’s clarification comes after yesterday the prosecutor Marijuan requested that the suspension of social plans be complied with to the beneficiaries who bought dollars in banks, when presenting a criminal complaint derived from an AFIP report on alleged irregularities. When terminating a preliminary investigation initiated in his prosecutor’s office, Marijuan demanded that “the suspension of the social plans detected in such an infraction of the regulations in force by the AFIP be complied with.” In the complaint, he also requested that “the officials of the Ministry of Social Development in charge of implementing the Empower Work Plan and also the AFIP officials involved in the development of the report referred to in this complaint” be summoned to testify as witnesses. At the same time, it requested that “the original and complete confidential report be obtained from the AFIP, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development and that it account for the irregularities mentioned herein.” Within the complaint, the prosecutor assessed that it could have been included in a crime of “defrauding the public administration.”
