ANDIS Scandal: New Audio Deepens Corruption Probe

The ruling described a mechanism in which officials and businessmen would have operated in coordination to direct contracts, manage payments, and sustain a circuit of illegal benefits at the expense of public funds intended for people with disabilities. Now, with the investigation under the purview of Judge Ariel Lijo, the case enters a new phase. Prosecutors are seeking to delve precisely into those connections that, according to the previous ruling, were not exhausted by the already established facts. The message was incorporated into the report with which prosecutors Franco Picardi and Sergio Rodríguez requested new interrogations for the former head of ANDIS, Diego Spagnuolo, for the businessman and lobbyist Miguel Ángel Calvete, and for the former number two of the agency, Daniel Garbellini. The content of the audio, according to the reconstruction known this Thursday, shows a logic of alignment and closing of ranks within the groups that the Justice is investigating for alleged price-fixing schemes, directed purchases, and shadow businesses set up around the system of drug supply. When an investigation into drug business appears with audios about “alignments”, internal court intrigue, and figures of power, the problem ceases to be merely administrative. Buenos Aires, April 9, 2026 - Total News Agency - TNA - The case for alleged corruption schemes at the National Disability Agency (ANDIS) has added in recent hours a new element of high political and judicial voltage: an audio attributed to the former director of Access to Health Services of the agency, Pablo Atchabahian, in which “Caputito”, “Rioja”, and the already known “Helvético” are mentioned, in a conversation that investigators consider relevant to deepen the plot of relationships between former officials, businessmen, and eventual support beyond the formal structure of the agency. The shadow of a parallel management over ANDIS is, precisely, one of the most delicate hypotheses that the Justice is exploring. The judicial scenario was already explosive in itself before this new ruling. In February, Casanello prosecuted Spagnuolo for bribery, fraud against the State, and incompatible negotiations, also considering him one of the presumed heads of an illicit association entrenched in the agency. Garbellini, Calvete, and Atchabahian himself were also prosecuted, all with multi-million dollar embargoes. That is why the audio regains strength: not only as an indication of contact between the two groups that the Justice believes operated inside and outside the agency, but also as a possible window to higher levels of political power. The phrase ends with a definition that investigators look at with a magnifying glass: “we are all aligned” and we must “close ranks” for the “conservation of everything the same”. The importance of the audio is not only in the encrypted language but in what it could reveal about the real power structure behind the investigated scheme. Neither the prosecutors nor the judge who had originally prosecuted several defendants, Sebastián Casanello, explicitly identified in their resolutions who “Rioja” or “Caputito” would be. In that message, Atchabahian tells Calvete that Garbellini had spoken with “the bald one”, apparently in reference to Spagnuolo, and that he had already informed the “Helvético”, who in turn would communicate it to “Rioja”. And, in a case like ANDIS, that boundary has already begun to blur. However, the reference to “Rioja” was read in different judicial coverages as a possible allusion to the Menem circle, due to the political and family origin of that group, while “Caputito” was interpreted in the key of a possible mention to the presidential advisor Santiago Caputo. The underlying question is whether those code names were just hallway comments, a way of overacting closeness to the top of the power, or, on the contrary, they reflected true channels of influence. Politically, the case again puts the ruling party in a zone of maximum discomfort. Although neither Santiago Caputo nor the Menems appear today formally accused in this case, the mere emergence of those names or nicknames in crossed messages between former officials and private operators strikes one of the most sensitive fibers of the Government: the promise of purity against the “caste” and the austere management of the State. So far, however, that interpretation remains in the realm of hypotheses and not of a formal judicial imputation. Where there is a more consolidated clue is in the identity of “the Helvético”. In the same case, and according to references incorporated into the file, that nickname “would correspond” to Sebastián Nuner Uner, a high executive linked to the drug company Suizo Argentina, a firm that appears under suspicion within the investigated scheme. It becomes political. The mention is not minor: if the “Helvético” is indeed that executive, the audio reinforces the idea that from the private sector, decisions that far exceeded the role of a simple state supplier were being monitored and coordinated.