Joe Lewis sold Sierra Grande airport to the United Arab Emirates

The airport that the English magnate built in Rio Negro is now owned by the company Manzil SA. As we anticipated and as Congressman Magdalena Odarda warns, it will be used for the liquefied gas plant project that YPF is planning with the Anglo-Dutch Shell, in the Gulf of San Matías.

24 de January de 2025 08:23

A tax assessment by the province of Río Negro revealed that the foreign airport does not pay any taxes.

Following the increase in property tax, which arises from the new fiscal package, it was revealed that the foreign airport in Río Negro, built by Joseph Lewis , does not pay any tax. Simply because for the officials “it does not exist” . This was stated in an opinion piece published in El cohete a la luna by the Vamos con Todos legislator, Magdalena Odarda .

After 13 years of deliberate silence, the government of Juntos Somos Río Negro finally dared to do what it had never done before: speak publicly about the private airport built by the Englishman Joe Lewis just 1,000 meters from the sea, in a border security zone and about 30 kilometers south of the town of Sierra Grande .

For Odarda , the "involuntary and even naive confession of the government in the debate on the so-called Ports Law, which - in fact - would imply handing over the ports of Rio Negro to the large English gas and oil corporations, demonstrated the real collusion with the British magnate and the new investors from the Arab world and the United Kingdom."

Puerto Lobos airport , located on the strategic 42nd parallel, has been putting Argentina's territorial integrity at risk for 17 years due to the lack of controls on the movement that takes place there. Due to its location, it is two hours by flight from the Malvinas Islands and the base that the invading English enemy, together with NATO, maintain in Monte Agradable.

As we reported at the time from Agenda Malvinas , the airport has a runway 2,200 meters long, 30 meters wide - equivalent to Aeroparque Jorge Newbery - and is prepared for the landing of large aircraft. It has a hangar with capacity to house several aircraft and an exclusive complex of cabins by the sea that includes armed security personnel and even a fence in the beach area.

In the note, the deputy Odarda stated that “Lewis does not even own the airport anymore. Today, the owner of the airport is an Argentine company called Manzil Sociedad Anónima, whose owner is 95% Ignacio Petrocchi Massuh, and 5% of the package, Daniel Ortiz. And they pay 129,000 pesos per month in property taxes.” Very accurately, the legislator from Río Negro indicated that they do not pay a single tax for the airport, but that they also “pay taxes (only) for the countryside, with the equivalent of a supermarket purchase for a typical Argentine family.”

According to Odarda , “the alleged signature of national capital is none other than the same one that maintains conflicts with indigenous communities in the region of Alto Río Chubut, and in the vicinity of the Manso and Foyel rivers” , which suggests “a possible transfer of power behind the back of public knowledge, from the companies of Joseph Lewis to their new owners: the United Arab Emirates, through their visible faces in Argentina” .

Through investigations carried out by journalist Susana Lara , published on the Tramas website, it was learned that “Ignacio Petrochi Massuh is the lawyer of the Massuh group and would also operate as a vehicle for Emirati capital in Argentina. The investors who own the land in Río Negro are Osama Hussein Saleh Hussein Alahdal and Faris and Matar Suhail Al Ybhouni Aldhaheri, among others. They operate, among other firms, through the supposedly “national” Manzil SA” , said Deputy Odarda .

In the early 1970s, the Massuh Group had only one company; but by 1983 it already had ten companies (cellulose, paper mills, banks, etc.). Its growth had been excessive, as had its debt of 92 million dollars, which Domingo Cavallo subsidized and nationalized in 1982.

The Massuhs were then part of several of the employers' institutions that sponsored the coup, such as the Argentine Business Council, the Stock Exchange, and the Rotary Club.

For the legislator from Río Negro, “in addition to the privileges of the RIGI, it now seems that another one has been added: based on the announced megaprojects (Vaca Muerta Sur oil pipeline, LNG plant, green hydrogen), this colossal runway will fulfill a strategic function due to its location close to the NATO base in the Malvinas Islands, controlled by the same countries interested in taking the common natural resources of the people of Río Negro without paying a single peso.”

As we indicated in Agenda Malvinas , the public controversy over the construction of the LNG plant in Sierra Grande omitted an important detail: that it would be located near the field where the British magnate Joe Lewis built the airport and that strictly political issues and strong economic interests linked to the government of Javier Milei , the admirer of Margaret Thatcher , were the real reasons for the decision to move the plant from Bahía Blanca to Punta Colorada. A project that YPF will currently carry out with the Anglo-Dutch Shell.

We hope that, as León Gieco says in his song, “if a traitor can do more than a few, that those few will not easily forget it.”

Sources:

The rocket to the moon

Malvinas Agenda

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