One of the officials very close to the Chief of Staff of the Nation Guillermo Francos ; expressed to this medium, that from the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications and Connectivity "they will seek to comply with what was agreed" on November 15, 2022, date on which LeoLabs Argentina SRL obtained from that area, Provision No. DI-2022-APN-SSTYCO # JGM that granted it authorization on a precarious basis , to " install and put into operation an S Band Earth Station", in the jurisdiction of the municipality of Tolhuin, located on the west side of National Route No. 3; 110 kilometers north of the city of Ushuaia.
Agenda Malvinas ' query was formulated after the newspaper Clarín published this Sunday, the 8th, as an advance; that the National Government will enable the LeoLabs radar, judging that it is neither British nor fulfills a military function. And that after official technical studies and tough negotiations with representatives from the United States and the company, the government is preparing to authorize its operation.
The ratification that the source gave us to the Clarín version, runs parallel to the aspirations of the administration of the Tierra del Fuego governor Gustavo Melella , aimed at achieving in the Judicial Branch of Tierra del Fuego, open the doors to cancel the registration that the government itself granted to the company in the General Inspection of Justice of Ushuaia on March 4, 2022. And in turn, give it legal grounds to order the dismantling of the radar mounted at the El Relincho Ranch .
A legal action by the Melella administration , which bears the hallmark of a delay of one calendar year. Since the request with which it went to court at the end of last August is none other than the request that the former Undersecretary of Telecommunications and Connectivity Mariano Lombardi made on September 20, 2023, to the governor himself and which he did not listen to: to deregister the aforementioned company through the IGJ taking into account a British partner in a sensitive corporate purpose; to make the arrangements with the corresponding companies to cut off electricity and internet services; and to reverse the environmental authorization granted.
On these issues, the Civil and Commercial Court No. 2 of the city of Ushuaia has so far only granted the precautionary measure requested by the IGJ in that LeoLabs must refrain from carrying out acts established in its corporate objectives. In this case, not operating the ground station or radar, whose structure has already been set up and exists within the Jurisdiction of Tolhuin. But regarding the substantive issues raised by the Fuegian Executive, the Court did not issue an opinion.
Thus, in a race against the Tierra del Fuego government, the company moved its pieces to recover the space monitoring project in Tierra del Fuego, which last year the Ministry of Defense of the Nation described as “a danger to national security.” And with the support of the US embassy in Argentina, it gains strength from the political, economic, financial and military alignment that Javier Milei's government has with the US.
