A ruling party senator-elect whose swearing-in to the upper chamber was delayed amid drug-trafficking claims has given up her bid to take up her seat in the upper house.
La Libertad Avanza national deputy Lorena Villaverde, who won election to the Senate in the October midterm elections representing Río Negro Province, reiterated this week that she has “no ongoing criminal cases either in Argentina or in the United States” against her.
But on Thursday, after numerous attempts to block her from taking up her seat in the upper house, she aborted her attempt and said she would remain in the lower house for the next two years and complete her current term in office.
“To agree to continue under these conditions would be to validate the damage and put my family at risk. I will not do that,” Villaverde said in a letter addressed to President Javier Milei that was shared on social media.
Stating that her decision was taken with her children in mind, Villaverde claimed that she was a victim of “obscene, malicious and profound media campaigns designed to destroy, wear down and humiliate me.”
The about-face came just two days after Villaverde had insisted in a radio interview that she has “no ongoing criminal cases either in Argentina or in the United States” against her.
“They have sullied my name and my honour, and no-one is prepared for their name to be destroyed. I have been acquitted in every case. I am not a drug-trafficker, I am not a fraudster,” Villaverde said in an interview with Radio Rivadavia on Wednesday.
Villaverde, who since 2023 has been a national deputy for President Javier Milei’s ruling party representing Río Negro, was referring to her 2002 arrest in Sarasota, United States, when she was accused of involvement in cocaine-trafficking.
Detained along with two other individuals for the “distribution of illicit drugs” and “conspiracy to distribute narcotics,” the case was closed by US federal prosecutors in 2017 and she is no longer under criminal prosecution in Florida.
According to reporting by La Nación, she was convicted in 2002, won a retrial and was released from jail, later left the United States and the charges were withdrawn in 2017 after 14 years of inactivity.
Since the midterms, lawmakers from various caucuses – not least the Unión por la Patria (Peronist) opposition – have objected to her appointment and prevented her from being sworn in.
Her credentials were placed under review by the Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Enzo Fullone, the candidate who came second on the ruling party’s provincial list in October, is expected to replace her in the upper house as La Libertad Avanza’s 20th representative.
‘Unworthy’
Peronism’s local branch in Río Negro Province had earlier accused the senator-elect of “moral unfitness” in respect to the US allegations and reports linking her to recently extradited Argentine businessman Federico ‘Fred’ Machado, who is facing drug-trafficking and fraud allegations in the US courts.
José Mayans, president of the Unión por la Patria caucus in the Senate, said last month that the upper house could not allow Villaverde to take office “because her links to drug-trafficking” made her “unworthy of holding a seat.”
“We do not agree that someone with this background should occupy a seat in the Senate,” he insisted.
Earlier this year, Peronist deputy Martín Soria presented a document before the Senate indicating that Villaverde had been cited in a cocaine-trafficking case in Florida.
According to Soria, the libertarian was arrested in Florida with 400 grams of cocaine. He also said her home was raided in 2017 in a money-laundering probe, and that there are complaints regarding fraudulent land sales in Las Grutas, Río Negro.
Villaverde maintains that her critics have “never found any illegal behaviour” in her life.
The national deputy claimed in her letter to Milei that the drug-trafficking allegations against her were part of a campaign of “calculated violence against a woman, a mother and a leader who makes the old political establishment uncomfortable.”
“Sectors of the old regime have tried to turn my personal situation into a tool to slow down reforms … and wear down the project for change,” she wrote. “I will not be part of that manoeuvre. They will not use me as a pawn to stop the course that millions of Argentines have chosen.”
‘No case pending’
Villaverde maintains that her critics have “never found any illegal behaviour” in her life.
“I have no case pending. In every case, I complied with the law and in every one, I was found innocent. I have absolutely nothing against me,” she said midweek.
Villaverde was born in San Antonio Oeste and completed her secondary education in Cipolletti, Río Negro Province. She studied public accountancy at the National University of Comahue but did not finish her degree. In the private sector, she has worked in tourism marketing, port activities and property development.
In 2023, inspired by Milei, she decided to enter politics and ran for mayor of Las Grutas. Although she did not win, her rise within the libertarian movement enabled her to boost her profile and win election as a national deputy for Río Negro in elections that same year.
In Congress, she aligned herself with the harder-line factions of La Libertad Avanza, participating in debates on the economy and security and voicing fierce criticism of the opposition.
“I want to make something clear: I did not get involved in this project for a seat, nor for a salary, nor for personal honours. I joined because I believe in freedom, in merit, in hard work and in your leadership. And precisely for that reason, because I believe in this path as the only possible way forward for Argentina,” she said in her resignation letter.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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