2024-04-10 16:16:10
The governor of Salta, Gustavo Saenz, criticized the national government for having removed the tobacco chapter from the Base Law and giving in to the “Lord of Tobacco” lobby. The president roared against this decision of the libertarians. “It is a shame” that this article does not appear in the new Executive project. In addition, Sáenz spoke of pressure “from some deputies.”
The Government sent a new draft Base Law, with some key modifications after the failure in February. The tobacco chapter proposed that all companies in the sector pay the same taxes. But that modification was not included.
Without identifying him, Governor Sáenz made reference to Pablo Oteroowner of Tabacalera Sarandí, which pays less than its competitors since it has an injunction against the minimum cigarette tax in court.
“I found out from the media that they had removed the modification of tobacco taxes from the fiscal chapter, and we received the project without this chapter. And the truth is that I am bewildered, disoriented, disillusioned, a little of everything,” said Sáenz.
A million-dollar billing in dollars
The president described that the favored company “perceives itself as an SME but has a turnover of more than 800 million dollars; He calls himself a national but he does not buy a single kilo of Argentine tobacco because he imports everything from Brazil, and since 2018 he has not paid taxes – he stated – due to legal devices or whatever, and he owes the treasury more than 2 billion dollars. ”.
Sáenz assured that the decision to remove that article from the Bases Law was made “by a group of deputies who do not know the regional economies, who have never seen a tobacco plantation in their lives, the number of jobs it generates and the amount of people who live off tobacco and plantations.” For this reason, he asked President Javier Milei to introduce the article in the project so that those legislators “are evident in Congress.”
Darts against the “Tobacco Lord”
In addition, Sáenz reported that he was pressured not to talk about the issue. However, he said that he is not afraid and that he will continue with the claim. “For me, fear paralyzes, it would not allow me to be speaking today and raise what I have been raising – remarked the governor of Salta – and try to go deeper with this, for this chapter to be discussed and for those who have to show their faces. put. Justice should have acted to see who are those who accompany and help so that this irregular, unjust and even illegal situation is investigated once and for all,” he said.
Last night, once the sending of the new Bases Law project was known, Sáenz had expressed himself in his account of X against “Mr. Tobacco.”
President, the northern provinces, and all the citizens of the rest of the country, we ask you not to give in to the pressures and interests that you yourself have attacked in public. “Don’t let Mr. Tobacco win,” the president wrote.
