Buenos Aires, Feb 11 (NA) – Eduardo Kovalivker, the chemical engineer from La Plata who built his fortune leading the pharmacy Suizo Argentina—one of the main intermediaries in the country's pharmaceutical business—is undergoing a public transformation: from a businessman investigated by federal justice to a prolific author of history, poetry, and fiction books, with the collaboration of figures like historian Felipe Pigna.
Kovalivker, born in La Plata in October 1944, a graduate of the National University of that city, with stays in Israel and France before definitively settling in Argentina in 1973, has accumulated an extensive business career in the pharmaceutical sector. That business model is precisely the one now under judicial scrutiny.
The ANDIS Case and the Corruption Audios The surname Kovalivker appears in the case known as "the corruption audios," linked to the National Disability Agency (ANDIS), a case in which former official Diego Spagnuolo was processed for criminal association, fraud, and bribes.
The participation of Pigna, one of the country's most renowned historians, serves as a seal of legitimacy for an author whose name is associated with a criminal case for corruption. The paradox does not end there: while Kovalivker vehemently defends the controversial transfer of San Martín's saber to the Grenadier Regiment—a decision that cost two directors of the National Historical Museum their jobs—Pigna is among the historians who opposed that measure.
Kovalivker also integrates the Grenadiers Foundation, presided over by businesswoman Bettina Bulgheroni, and in 2023 donated the Paseo de los Granaderos on Avenida Cabildo to the Regiment: fifteen plaques with phrases from San Martín. Acts of patronage that consolidate a network of ties with military, editorial, and business power that transcend his past in the pharmaceutical business.
What remains to be determined is whether justice will manage to clarify how Suizo Argentina's intermediation operated within the ANDIS network, while its former president dedicates himself to writing about "courage and patriotism" with the help of renowned co-authors.
In judicial records, the names of Jonathan and Emmanuel Kovalivker emerge, pointed out by the investigation based on wiretaps and references to people who supposedly sit on the board of directors, such as the case of Sebastián Nuner Uner.
Consulted by the newspaper La Nación, the former president of Suizo Argentina limited himself to stating that "the case remains open" and that he considers himself "disassociated" because he no longer heads the company.
"Stories of Courage and Patriotism," a book edited by Hojas del Sur, the same publisher where President Javier Milei publishes. This defense, however, relies more on a formal aspect than on the substance of the matter and does not clear up the doubts raised by the ongoing investigation.
From Pharmaceutical Business to Letters with Help Retired from the business that made him a millionaire, Kovalivker has turned to writing with a body of work that is notable for its volume and the company he chooses.
The pharmacy Suizo Argentina, which he presided over, operates as an intermediary between the National State and laboratories, a link in the chain that public health specialists point to as one of the factors that drive up medicine prices in Argentina. Kovalivker, however, does not see the contradiction and argues that "any group of zealous extremists or simply thieves" could have taken the relic from the museum.
His literary output is vast: he has accumulated more than a dozen poetry books, several novels, and stories published in publishers from Argentina, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Mexico, Cuba, and Israel. In 2022, he published "The Grenadiers of San Martín" alongside Felipe Pigna. He is now preparing "Flying Low."
