Grave revelation: Macri's minister "was drunk" when he closed a controversial agreement for Malvinas, according to a report.
File: Stephania Bauer
Correspondent Austria/UK
A UK media revealed the memoirs of an official, in which he tells of an alleged drunkenness of a Macri official at the British embassy in Buenos Aires.
The website Declassified published that Alan Duncan, UK Foreign Minister for the Americas from 2016 to 2019, acknowledged that he reached an agreement for the Falkland Islands with the Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister, Carlos Foradori, who at the conclusion of the negotiation "was totally drunk".
The agreement, totally detrimental to Argentina, was later endorsed by former President Mauricio Macri himself and Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra.
According to the English website, "Duncan said that on September 12, his first day in the city, he met with the 'excellent' new ambassador of the United Kingdom in Argentina, Mark Kent".
"Beneath the embassy residence is a fabulous, well-lit wine cellar, with the walls lined with bottles of Merlot. The setting is quite nice for a meeting and we met there with Carlos Foradori, the deputy foreign minister," says the former British official.
"It was a good diplomatic backdrop to the delicate negotiations to secure additional flights to the Falklands; for a million reasons Argentina's cooperation is required for any connection through the mainland," Duncan added.
"As bottle after bottle was passed from the hold wall to the table, negotiations improved. At about 2 a.m. we shook hands on a general agreement," he sentenced.
Drunk Macrista?
The next day, on September 13, Duncan wrote, as published by the English media: "Mark Kent says Foradori just phoned to say he was so drunk last night he couldn't remember all the details. Like a true Brit, Mark reminded him of what he had agreed, faithfully and without embellishment. So I think we're still on track."
Carlos Foradori rejected to the English media the statements made by Duncan, who would have no reason to lie about this issue, which, in the end, served -and a lot- the interests of his country.
The Macri official affirms that he could not reach an agreement because "each issue analyzed in the statement needed to be validated later in formal agreements", which were later reached, a statement that does not have to deny whether he was drunk or not.
For his part, extroverted former ambassador Mark Kent, who is now chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, did not respond to Declassified's questions about the September 2016 night in his embassy cellar.
The PRO England deal
What did Carlos Foradori negotiate? The Macrista official negotiated a widely criticized deal with Britain in 2016, in which Argentina agreed to "remove all obstacles" to develop oil deposits around the Falkland Islands and add "more air links" from third countries.
