The president of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina S.A. (NA-SA) paid off personal debts of 825 million pesos in just 18 days, an amount equivalent to more than 80 net salaries for his position, amidst a management marked by complaints of overpricing and irregular practices at the state-owned company that operates the Atucha I, II, and Embalse nuclear power plants.
According to an investigation by the portal El Disenso, based on reports from the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA), the physicist—repatriated from the private sector to lead the company since April 2025—managed to eliminate liabilities that, until mid-January, had placed him in a "high risk of insolvency" situation with the financial system.
The rapid settlement of these bank obligations with Banco Macro coincides with a period of strong questioning about the transparency in the company's contracting. Under the current administration, NA-SA awarded contracts for a total of approximately 20,417 million pesos.
In this regard, the text states that "it is rumored that payments to suppliers are only made after an advance of a 5% commission on the contract," a figure that, applied to the total volume of purchases, would reach one billion pesos.
According to information gathered by the Argentine News Agency (Agencia Noticias Argentinas), the internal front of Nucleoeléctrica is going through a governance crisis following the recent removal of the general manager, Marcelo Famá, and the head of Administrative Coordination, Hernán Pantuso, both officials of close confidence to the entity's presidency.
However, sources close to the company's operations suggest systematic irregularities in payments. Complaints have also been filed for allegedly tailor-made tender documents, such as the cleaning services tender awarded to the firm LX Argentina—with estimated overpricing of 140%—and the contracting of epoxy painting services with technical requirements that only one company in the country, Consulper SA, could meet.
In this scenario of suspicions and debts paid off "overnight," the call for an external audit becomes imperative, following the premise often repeated by the Executive Branch itself: "Those who oppose audits are crooks."
The departures occurred within the framework of investigations carried out by the company's integrity committee regarding the possible steering of tenders. Among the cases under scrutiny is the migration of the SAP system to HANA, a project that "had an initial budget of USD 600,000 and expanded to an award of USD 7,000,000," absorbing the entire annual IT budget item.
