Joaquín Benegas Lynch Admits to Being Head of Glocal Terra but Denies Conflict of Interest with Land Law

Senator Joaquín Benegas Lynch rejected on Thursday the accusations from Senator Juliana Di Tullio, who called for his disqualification from voting in the Senate on the Law of Inviolability of Private Property due to an alleged conflict of interest given his relationship with the firm Glocal Terra SRL, which Ámbito reported he owns, aimed at attracting foreign clients wanting to acquire land in Argentina. "A general benefit is not a particular privilege," he excused himself.

The libertarian legislator is a founding partner of a company dedicated to providing advice to foreign investors interested in acquiring and managing rural land in Argentina. The company was established in 2020 alongside his wife, Eloísa Perea Muñoz.

The firm's activities began to generate repercussions in the Senate ahead of the consideration of the project that included a chapter modifying the Land Law, which initially proposed eliminating the maximum limit of 15% of land in foreign hands and later proposed raising it to 25%, only to be withdrawn due to a lack of agreement with the dialoguing opposition.

In this context, Di Tullio revealed the libertarian's relationship with the company. And this noon, during the session, Benegas Lynch spoke on the matter. "I founded my company in 2020, I have been in the agricultural sector for over 20 years. The company is dedicated to managing fields and advising on land purchases for Argentines and foreigners; we produce grains and meat," he first stated, then pointed out that this is public information: "It is no discovery; it is public, it is in my DDJJ."

In response to the request for disqualification to participate in the vote, he noted that the regulation emphasizes "a direct and singular interest," which, he said, does not apply to his case. "Does it benefit entrepreneurs for the Argentine countryside to do well? Yes. Just like the hundreds of thousands of agricultural SMEs in the country, their employees, and the towns that live off them. My company is part of the sector. A general benefit is not a particular privilege: there is not a single line in this law written for my company, nor a permit that I obtain and another does not," he defended.

Regarding the senator's accusation, he related it to "the old politics." "I got into this. It is part of the political mud, and my skin will thicken as we face those who destroyed Argentina for more than two decades," he said.

Beyond Benegas Lynch's defense of his connection with the company, this media outlet revealed that he also established the company Finca Luracatao S.A, which owns a vast territorial area in the Calchaquí Valleys, in the Province of Salta, covering areas of the departments of Cachi and Molinos. There, he found himself at the center of a dispute with indigenous communities over the exploitation of a gold mine, in which the senator's company appears as the titleholder of the domain.

In Finca Luracatao, his partner is Manuel José Biedma, who was an official in the Ministry of Transport during the government of Mauricio Macri. Also appearing on the board are Cecilia Durán López Lecube and her children Margarita María Freixas López Lecube and José López Lecube.

A qualified source in Entre Ríos defined Benegas Lynch as a "lobbyist" who, in fact, "at least in La Paz manages his wife's fortune." His connection to the Entre Ríos city dates back to 2007 when he joined the real estate firm Pampa Partners, which was linked to The Conservation Trust Land (now called Rewilding Argentina), a foundation created by the controversial American Douglas Tompkins.

Additionally, in his corporate network appears the firm he manages with his wife's family, which has unavoidable reminiscences of Tompkins: Pampa Investment SAS. It also includes Fernando Perez Muñoz, his former partner in Pampa Partners, Eduardo Choren, and lawyer Fernando Mazzinghi.