ADC warns of irregularities in Espert’s campaign financing for the 2021 elections

The Association for Civil Rights (ADC) has published an annex to its PubliElectoral report in which new irregularities were detected in the election money parties and candidates spent on social media. Among them stands out José Luis Espert, from Avanza Libertad. After falsely stating to have made zero investment in the primaries (PASO) before the Electoral Chamber, for the general elections, the newly elected representative did not submit any campaign finance report at all.

The situation is aggravated by the detection of two accounts linked to Espert, both posting on social media for the occasion. One of them is the candidate’s official site, with unreported expenses up to 160 thousand pesos. And besides, our investigation found another page called “La Espertneta”, created on October 26, which only registered activity during the campaign period and invested two million pesos in those three weeks of activity.

As published in the main analysis of PubliElectoral, several candidates reported not paying for adverts on social media to the National Electoral Chamber although they did so, both for the PASO and the general elections. Among them are Ricardo López Murphy, Nicolás del Caño, Romina Del Plá, Carlos Caserio and Anabel Fernández Sagasti.

The annex complements ADC’s original report, considering that the deadline to submit financing statements for the 2021 legislative elections has already expired. Once again, there is a lack of transparency in rendering election money, in contravention of the law of Political Financing regulated by the National Electoral Chamber.