“Life gives you surprises / life gives you surprises,” sings Panamanian Rubén Blades, without ever suspecting that such a statement would materialize this Wednesday in the city of Bariloche when a figurehead from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) He publicly confessed that he had purchased land in his name paid for by the Emir of Abu Dhabi. He committed such a mistake when testifying as a witness in a trial that he himself initiated for “usurpation and theft” against a Mapuche woman who dared to travel the mountain path along which for generations her community herded cattle between wintering and verandahs, in an ancestral practice recognized by Argentine Law.
The polo player Hugo Alberto Barabucci, who is in question, was the one who blew up the Matrix when, with some disdain, he admitted to having bought 14,689 hectares in the Alto Río Chubut area, in Cerro Carreras, Río Negro, “for something like two million dollars (…) with a donation from the Government of the Arab Emirates.” Barabucci lives half the year in the United Arab Emirates, where he is employed as a director of a polo club owned by that government.
Strictly speaking, Barabucci paid $2,050,175 for three fractions of a total of 19,269 hectares of land with native forests, glaciers, lagoons, rivers and springs of fresh water and wildlife in Cerro Carreras, southeast of Bariloche, according to the original deed to which he accessed Argentine Weather. Bicoca paid an average of 106 dollars per hectare. He bought them from businessman Marcelo Mindlin, partner of the English convict Joe Lewis, convicted in New York for financial fraud and owner of the Hidden Lake ranch that encloses Lago Escondido.. Mindlin had purchased that land in 2009 for $20.75 per hectare.
The documentation you accessed Time reveals that the $2,050,175 with which the lands were paid went from account AE 12027 109600 1958 867010 of the First Gulf Bank of Abu Dhabi, to account 84-922-3425 of the JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Not a cent passed through Argentine territory, which will only receive taxes and fees for the fiscal value of the property, of just 9,171,730 pesos.
The almost 20 thousand hectares that Barabucci paid with money from the Emirati Government are within the Protected Natural Area (ANP) of Río Negro “Cipresal de las Guaytekas”; also in the “Border Security Zone” that prevents foreigners from owning it, and at the same time contemplated by the Land Law (26737) that limits the sale to foreigners and directly prohibits it when it encloses water courses or bodies of water.
Although the area is “intangible” according to the Forest Law, there they built at least three mansions of 500 square meters, log cabins, warehouses and barns, there was soil movement, diversion of water courses, they dried up wetlands to create artificial lagoons, they opened roads and pits as well as aggregate quarries, all with the endorsement of the provincial government.
Barabucci’s writing did not sleep in a drawer. Over time it became a network of companies such as Dunia Inmobiliaria, Manzil SA, Estancia Las Marías and the Amaike Trust, in which other names appeared and disappeared such as Nicolás Van Ditmar (manager of Lago Escondido), Alfredo Bertger (of the Belgian group BURCO), Ignacio Petrocchi Massuh, Jorge Ortiz and Eduardo Maschwitz, among others. It is a structure of Russian matrioshkas set up in order to hide that the real owner is the Emirati businessman Mathar Suhail Ali Alyabhouni Aldhaheriwho together with his brother Faris are economic operators for the Emir of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahayan.
So much so that the Emir Mohamed bin Zayed took refuge here when Israel and the United States attacked Iran, on Saturday, February 28. Emir of Abu Dhabi, president of the UAE and commander in chief of its Armed Forces, Mohamed landed in Bariloche aboard his luxurious Boeing 787-9 Dreamline on Wednesday the 24th at the head of a massive procession and preceded by a fleet of four other planes, including a huge cargo Galaxy. The entourage moved in three helicopters to the Las Marías ranch mansion, followed by a caravan of 20 vans, cars and trucks with tons of cargo. Just a visit to lands that, according to the papers, are the exclusive property of his polo employee.
Barabucci’s public confession occurred on Wednesday in the public hearing of the trial that the front man himself initiated against Soledad Cayunao for the crimes of “usurpation and theft” because she goes up and down the hill with a few head of cattle. A member of the Cayunao lof, Soledad has suffered harassment and aggression for years from employees of that ranch, as have her neighbors and relatives from the Kom Kiñé Mu lof, ancestral occupants of those lands recognized by the State in 2006. Likewise, they sold them with them inside.
Soledad was acquitted of the accusations by Judge Marcelo Álvarez Melinger because the plaintiff was unable to prove her allegations. However, the trial scene was eloquent: a small Mapuche peasant woman and mother of four children, facing all the punitive power of the prosecution in the hands of Francisco Arrien; the plaintiff lawyer, Magdalena Sanguinetti, from the largest law firm in the Cordillera, a political cadre of the property-owning elites and representative of the repressive advance of Barabucci, figurehead of one of the richest oil monarchies on the planet that has been illegally appropriating enormous areas of national territory for a decade.
The cherry on the dessert was the star witness, Andrés Saint Anonin, manager of 14 ranches in the area, operator of rural and livestock businesses, son and brother of former presidents of the Rural Society of Bariloche and who attacked the photojournalist Alejandra Bartoliche in February 2023, when the Joe Lewis gang attacked the march for free access to Lago Escondido. In the trial for that attack he was sentenced to probation and was assisted by the same Sarmiento studio that now charged, and lost, against Soledad Cayunao. Strange landowner habit of attacking women. «
They will ask to investigate if there was fraud
Lawyers Juan Martín Palumbo and Milton Diaz, who defended Soledad Cayunao in the trial initiated by the front man of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Hugo Barabucci, announced that they will appeal to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the National Border Commission to investigate whether there is fraud in the lands acquired by Barabucci with Emirati money.
“It is incredible that whoever presents himself as the owner of the land has publicly acknowledged that he bought it directly with a donation of two million dollars from funds from the government of the Arab Emirates,” Palumbo was surprised.
The lawyer anticipated Argentine Weather: “We have asked that it be taken note of and sent to the Provincial and Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, so that the existence of crimes in the purchase can be investigated. And we will also go to the National Border Commission to analyze and determine if these purchases are not absolutely null and void, as established by Argentine Law.”
The role of the Patagonia Consensus
The lawyer from the Sarmiento firm Magdalena Sanguinetti, who sponsored the lawsuit against the front man Hugo Barabucci, is a leading political and legal cadre specialized in land issues. His solvency and personality were evident during the oral process this Wednesday, as he led the accusation and obstructed every intervention of the defense in the interrogation of witnesses. His imprint even blurred the prosecutor of El Bolsón, Francisco Arrien.
Sanguinetti is part of the largest studio in the region, with offices in Bariloche and San Isidro, but she is also an active participant in the surface organization Consenso Patagonia, a strongly anti-Mapuche structure that expresses the real estate interests of national and foreign elites with businesses in the region.
Patagonia Consensus, formerly called Bariloche Consensus, is the result of an anti-Mapuche korp promoted in 2017 by the current senator Patricia Bullrich Luro Pueyrredón when she was Minister of Security of former president Mauricio Macri, and under her management Santiago Maldonado was disappeared and then murdered, and shortly after the Mapuche militant Rafael Nahuel was shot in the back.
