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What in January 2025 was a specific complaint by the provincial deputy of Río Negro, Magdalena Odarda, about the sale of Joe Lewis's private airport in Bahía Dorada to Arab capital , is revealed today as a problem of much more serious dimensions.
The runway built by the British tycoon in 2008 not only changed hands without anyone officially reporting it, but its new owner - a company linked to the United Arab Emirates - has since operated in an almost complete legal vacuum.
In turn, Manzil SA , a company formally based in Argentina but with real Emirati owners, failed to register the purchase and sale transaction with the National Civil Aviation Administration . This means the airfield still appears on paper as belonging to Lewis's former companies . This double irregularity prevents any oversight of air traffic at the site.
The Río Negro Legislature never demanded supporting documentation for the transfer. Neither did the ANAC.
Meanwhile, just a few kilometers away, YPF and Shell are moving forward with the liquefied natural gas plant project in Punta Colorada , an initiative that will transform the region into a major energy hub. The airport, capable of handling aircraft such as the Boeing 737, is thus situated at the heart of a key area in Argentina's new hydrocarbon era, which has emerged from the development of the Vaca Muerta shale formation.
Image published on November 2, 2014 on the blog of the Argentine Republic Defense Forces: https://fdra.blogspot.com/2014/11/hipotesis-de-conflicto-el-aeropuerto.html
The Air Force opened the runway in 2008 without a public hearing or environmental impact assessment. Eighteen years later, the situation is worse: now the capitals of a country without military cooperation treaties with Argentina control an entry and exit point two hours' flight from the Malvina Islands.
Neither the provincial government of Alberto Weretilneck nor the national administration of Javier Milei have lifted a finger to reverse it.
The important fact is: while the new owners pay only 129,000 pesos per month in property tax for the "field", equivalent to a supermarket purchase, the Argentine State lost the possibility of collecting airport operating fees that any commercial airport must pay during all these years.
A transfer of sovereignty that continues to be carried out in silence, with the complicity of all the governments that came before and the indifference of those who today have the obligation to act.
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