Milei dissolves Argentina’s intelligence agency because it “was used” for internal espionage

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By LatAm Reports Staff Writers

Following this decision, Milei ordered the creation of the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE).

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, ordered on Monday the dissolution of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) after an investigation that concluded that “it was used for spurious activities such as internal espionage, influence trafficking and political and ideological persecution.”

“Without effective supervision, the product of interventions that lasted for years, the proliferation of these behaviors constituted a debt to the democratic and republican system that we begin to pay today,” reads a statement from the Argentine Presidency published on its profile of the social network X.

Following this decision, Milei arranged for the creation of the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), which will depend directly on it, and which will have control of four agencies “created in order to transform and modernize the intelligence system, promoting excellence and professionalism in the development of its tasks.”

SIDE will continue to be run by the current controller of the intelligence agency, Sergio Neiffert, who took over the post last month by replacing Silvestre Sívori. The new agencies are the Argentine Intelligence Service (SIA), the National Security Agency (ASN), the Federal Cybersecurity Agency (AFC) and the Internal Affairs Division (DAI).

This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo