Argentina Top Bank Head Says Macri Fired Him to Silence Dissent

The former head of the Central Bank in Argentina said President Mauricio Macri removed him from his position for opposing the government's neoliberal handling of the country's finances.

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Pedro Biscay, who was appointed to head the country's top bank in 2014 during the presidency of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, said the main reason behind the decision was that he had acknowledged that the financial and monetary policies of Macri had not been effective, as promised during his campaign.

"No one would consider firing a director of a central bank for making his opinion public," Biscay said in an interview with Pagina 12.

"There was a clear willingness on the part of the president of the nation and the (current) president of the Central Bank to silence the critical voice within the board."

Biscay said he was accused of altering financial and monetary stability with his comments and that lawmaker Pablo Tonelli, who heads the Constitutional Affairs commission inside the Senate, admitted that the real reason was to silence a dissident voice.

Biscay was fired on Thursday by Macri for "misconduct and breach of the duties of a public official," according to government decree 571/2017.

The resolution says Biscay puts "at risk the objectives set forth in the Organic Charter of the monetary entity, particularly with regards to financial stability in a banking system of fractional reserves and in the framework of a country that has gone through multiple currency and banking crises in recent decades."

"They transform a difference of criteria published in the press into an opinion crime," Biscay said.

Biscay added that the decree violates constitutional guarantees as it "strongly reflects that there is no legal or constitutional reason to prohibit a director (of the Central Bank) from speaking publicly about technical issues of the economic policy."

The government's decision was criticized in a joint statement by dozens of civil and human rights organizations, such as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the two branches of Argentina's Workers' Union, the feminist collective Ni Una Menos and several lawyers.

"They have fired the only director truly independent of economic power and the executive branch," Biscay said.