Buenos Aires, November 17, 2025 — Total News Agency-TNA — The corruption case in the National Disability Agency (ANDIS) is advancing with unusual speed in the federal courts, and it is dragging along a figure as well-known as controversial: Miguel Ángel Calvete, a recycled politician for four decades, with a past ranging from carapintada militancy and antisemitism accusations to convictions for pimping and ties to international drug traffickers.
According to the prosecution, Calvete appears as one of the central articulators of the network of overpricing, steering of purchases, and money laundering that would have operated within ANDIS between December 2023 and October 2025. The prosecution maintains that Calvete was the one who authorized the payment of five million pesos in cash for Spagnuolo himself, which ratifies his operational role, despite holding no formal position.
«For the prosecution, Calvete appears as one of the central articulators of the network of overpricing, steering of purchases, and money laundering that would have operated within ANDIS,» the statement reads.
However, Calvete's trajectory is not limited to public office. Being president of the Chamber of Chinese Supermarket Merchants (CASRECH), he also maintained his law firm and linked the defenses of street racers with other professionals. His name appears in recordings from the AMIA case, pointed out by an informant as antisemitic and close to former sergeant Jorge Pacífico, both linked to a failed attack on a business in Once a year before the 1994 bombing, according to Sergio Nantilo who provided recordings on this within the framework of the AMIA case.
Chats, records, photos, and notebooks seized from Calvete show he maintained direct contact with Diego Spagnuolo, then head of ANDIS, a close friend and former lawyer of President Javier Milei. His ties to pharmacies such as Profarma, New Farma, Génesis, Floresta, and INDECOMM were reflected in the seized material: handwritten ledgers with dates, prices, differences between real and billed costs, and calculations of returns equivalent to two-thirds of the overbilled amount.
The investigation, which also points to Daniel Garbellini and fourteen other people, will have to determine the degree of responsibility of each in a network that, according to the prosecutor, functioned as a criminal organization destined to plunder funds intended for the population with disabilities. The ANDIS case is already considered one of the most serious corruption scandals in recent years. A whole mechanism that, according to the prosecutor's indictment, had a clear objective: to manipulate tenders for high-cost supplies, restrict competition, assign adjudications to a closed circuit of companies, and distribute bribes among officials and external operators.
According to the accusation, the maneuver would have mobilized more than 48,783 million pesos, directly affecting the Incluir Salud program, intended for people with disabilities, mothers with seven children, and the elderly without medical coverage.
«The harm was directed against the most vulnerable population in the system,» Picardi emphasized.
Among the documents seized from Calvete, there appears a list of contacts involving officials, suppliers, family members, and close associates, as well as a handwritten note referring to the elected libertarian deputy Karen Reichardt and her ex-husband, Gustavo Balabanian, who appears in Bank of America records as a receiver of transfers from drug trafficker Federico "Fred" Machado.
His history also includes political support for the carapintadas of Aldo Rico during the 1987 Semana Santa uprising, which places him within the hardest sectors of military nationalism of that period. His influence was even embodied in a piece of paper stuck in his kitchen, where the signatures with which he maintained direct contact were noted, many of them being suppliers to the agency.
Judge Sebastián Casanello began this Tuesday a round of 14 hearings, led by Calvete himself, in a judicial process that will mark a turning point in the case.
