After Christmas, on Monday Javier Milei left the Hotel Libertador, which had been his home for three months, and finally moved to the Quinta de Olivos, the usual residence of Argentine heads of state. He managed it without his four “four-legged children,” as he calls his English Mastiff dogs. It happens that the huge cages with reinforced walls that he had built on an old stable are not yet finished. “Great Danes are very big. “Milton (one of the dogs) is two meters tall on two legs and weighs 100 kilos, and the house is not a very strong structure, they can tear down walls,” Milei described. His “dog children” will continue to live in a daycare center for the time being.
The new Presidential House is located in the northern part of Greater Buenos Aires, where Milei, as he announced, has already started working almost all week, except Tuesdays and Thursdays, when he will chair the Cabinet meetings at the Casa Rosada. He will use the car to get there and back and not the presidential helicopter, as former President Cristina Kirchner used to do.
It is said that the sister and presidential secretary Karina Milei, who has a great affinity for esotericism, ordered that the new residence be “cleaned” to rid it of the “bad energy” that had undoubtedly accumulated over the years. The property has been home to 15 presidential families over the past 60 years. Three presidents fell ill and died there, including Juan Perón. “From there, on July 1, 1974, the funeral procession that paralyzed the country left and his body returned there.” Months later, the body of Eva Perón was placed in the crypt and returned to the crypt after a macabre journey that began in 1957 Country back,” says author Felipe Pigna about the intimacies of the presidential villa. After coming to power, dictator Jorge Videla refused to move until the bodies of Perón and Evita were taken to a cemetery.
In previous interviews, Milei has confessed that she does not know whether her partner Fátima Flórez will move to Quinta de Olivos or not. “We’re only a few months old,” he once explained. Those who will move there in a few days will be his sister and her four dogs. It is possible that his two most influential ministers will also move, Milei wants them to remain closed during his working hours and in the event of an emergency. They are the Chief of Staff Nicolás Posse and the Minister of Human Capital Sandra Pettovelo, who would live in the two adjacent chalets, which would also be renovated and represent a kind of guest houses on the 35 hectare property.
After Milei's move, a controversy arose in the country over who paid or will pay the bills for the luxury four-star Libertador Hotel in central Buenos Aires. Milei set it up as his bunker and remained there from mid-October as a second-round candidate and remained as president-elect for almost another month, with no official record of his visitors in those first crucial days as president. Their presence resulted in the 193-room, seven-suite hotel increasing demand, recording 100 percent occupancy in recent months. Hotel Libertador is owned by the IRSA group, owned by businessman Eduardo Elsztain, a friend of President Milei and one of his campaign donors. He accompanied him to the front row at the inauguration and, according to various journalistic sources, was the one who connected the libertarian leader with the Orthodox Jewish organization Chabad Lubavitch, of which Milei was a fan. Shortly before he took up his mandate, the businessman of Jewish origin accompanied Milei on his trip to New York and took him to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, which is considered a miracle. Other versions suggest that Elsztain, along with other businessmen, brought together dozens of law firms that worked in record time to draft the deregulatory DNU, which the opposition believes will ultimately benefit large economic groups.
According to the Hotel Libertador website, a night in the presidential “suite” where Milei stays (excluding the other rooms occupied by his staff) costs nearly $350. That means a month's stay in this exclusive hotel suite costs around $10,500, almost 9 million pesos. And Milei stayed there for almost three months.
The deputy of the Frente de Todos, Rodolfo Tahiljade, said sarcastically on his social networks that on December 19 he requested public information from the General Secretariat of the Presidency, headed by Karina Milei, “to find out if the Libertador Hotel was requested by the President of the Nation Elsztain is inhabited.”, the caste, the pocket of Milei, Conan, pays for it, or all Argentines pay for it.
It is questionable whether Milei has paid or will pay out of his own pocket, by what means he will do so, when it is known that he has raffled off the salaries of his deputies in recent months. Unless you've exhausted your savings. And whether the president's stay at the Hotel Libertador was a “donation” from his friend Elsztain is also controversial, as donations are banned under Argentina's public ethics law, which could lead to problems.
Not even presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni was able to answer journalists' questions at a press conference about who paid for Milei's stay at the Hotel Libertador. It still had to be found out and as of now there is no official information. There was the official appointment of a senior IRSA executive as an official at the head of the State Assets Agency, an organization that manages and sells state assets and real estate. This fact has been criticized by some media and the opposition as Milei begins to pay for the favors of the company that provided him with shelter and food during his heated campaign days and in his first weeks as president.