Argentina Country Profile
Land Administration
Individual Corruption
According to the Global Corruption Barometer 2010, some households need to pay bribes to land services in order to buy, sell, rent or inherit land.
Business Corruption
According to the Bertelsmann Foundation 2010, despite the fact that companies' property rights are protected by Argentinean law, they are nevertheless not firmly anchored in institutions. Corruption and politicisation within the judiciary and public administration make regulating property acquisition and enforcing property rights difficult in Argentina. The time to be spent and steps a company must go through to register property in Argentina are slightly less cumbersome than in other South American countries, as reported by the World Bank & IFC Doing Business 2011.
Political Corruption
In a February 2011 article by CBS News, a series of secret cables released by Wikileaks revealed that the former President of Argentina Nestor Kirchner was involved in corrupt real estate deals. The leaks reported that Kirchner had resold a five-acre plot of land for USD 2 million; 40 times the price that he had paid only two years earlier.
According to the same article, in a small Argentine town, El-Calafate, very profitable sales of large properties were also made; the mayor of the town is reportedly an ally of the former President. The Embassy explained in the report that a judicial investigation looking into the deals was put in the hands of the niece of the President, who was a prosecutor and benefited herself from the deals that were made. The Embassy further explains that the deals turned out to involve 50 other government officials and that key government auditing posts were filled with political insiders with conflicts of interest.
Frequency
The World Bank & IFC: Doing Business 2011:
- Registering property in Argentina requires a company to go through 6 administrative steps and takes an average of 52 days at a cost of 7% of the property value.
World Economic Forum: The Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011:
- Business executives give the protection of property rights in Argentina, including financial assets, a score of 2.7 on a 7-point scale (1 being 'very weak' and 7 'very strong').
Transparency International: Global Corruption Barometer 2010:
- 5.5% of the households surveyed reported to have paid a bribe to land services in 2009.
