This Tuesday the government appointed Andres Edgardo Vazquezformer head of the General Directorate of Taxes (DGI), to managing director of the Customs Collection and Inspection Authority (ARCA)in place of Juan Alberto Pazo, who resigned. The new official, who has more than 35 years of experience in the former AFIP, He is being investigated for alleged illicit enrichment, money laundering and tax evasionamong other possible crimes, for undeclared foreign accounts and for paying taxes on three condominiums in Miami using checks in his name that he had not declared in Argentina.
According to the provisions of Decree 890/2025 published in the Official Gazette, Vázquez will take office from Thursday 18th to complete a legal term. The change comes after Pazo informed Economy Minister Luis Caputo of his intention to return to the private sector.
For his part, Vázquez is being pursued by the judiciary due to turbulent and suspicious movements in the AFIP, now ARCA. During his long career in the tax collection agency, he had to contend with four of his superiors, and none of them could fire him. He also faced several summaries and at least two criminal trials, which he also overcame. Then President Javier Milei appointed him head of the DGI.
An accountant and indispensable reference of the ARCA fiscal intelligence service, Vázquez, with the help of Carlos García Lorea, established ties with the power and espionage of Francisco Larcher and Jaime Stiuso from this area almost a quarter of a century ago.
In December 2024, two months after Vázquez’s appointment as DGI, THE NATION published an investigation documenting that ARCA’s current owner purchased through foreign companies three properties in the United States for more than $2 million which he never stated in his affidavits before the Anti-Corruption Authority (OA). After that it will Office of Administrative Investigations (PIA) an investigation has been initiated.
These included a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which is the controlling company of two other companies registered in Panama, which in turn served as a vehicle for acquiring ownership of the properties located in Miami.
It is not the first time that Vázquez has been linked to operations in tax havens. In 2011 he faced one Complaint because since November 2004 he and his sister, Silvia Mónica Vázquez, a Bank account at ING Bank NV on the island of Curacao for $442,113, funds he said he transferred to an account at BNP Paribas in Luxembourg in July 2006. The official did not inform the Argentine Ministry of Finance and was subjected to a criminal investigation, during which he was fired in 2022 because federal judge Ariel Lijo did not receive a response from Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Curaçao to verify the existence of these accounts, and Faced with this impossibility, Lijo closed the investigation.
After the publication of THE NATION In December, then-presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni claimed in a press conference that Vázquez had already been fired because of this real estate operation Lijo, in 2022, and that it is therefore “a problem of the past”. Meanwhile, the appointment of Vázquez as head of the DGI caused internal excitement in the government and was mysterious: he signed the appointment decree Milei together with the then security minister, Patricia Bullrich. Not even the chief of staff, Guillermo Franconor the Minister of Economic Affairs, Luis Caputotook part in the process. Even the then head of the AFIP did not sign, Florence Mizrahiwhom the president ultimately fired in December 2024.
In September of this year, Vázquez won a battle in the investigation into his properties in Miami: he succeeded in deposing the prosecutor in charge. At his request, the federal judge Daniel Rafecas referred to his colleague Marcelo Martinez de Giorgi and the case was left to him and the federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuandespite the refusal of the public prosecutor, who had intervened up to that point, Carlos Rivolowho unsuccessfully emphasized that he had the most advanced investigation and that test measures were already in development.
Then, in November, LA NACION confirmed that Vázquez had paid taxes on three condominiums in Miami with checks in his name that he had not declared in Argentina, in maneuvers that were not registered with the anti-corruption agency. This was reflected in official Miami-Dade County documents from 2014 to 2018, when he was already a senior AFIP official.
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