A spokesman for Argentina’s president has denied that Donald Trump asked for a business favour when Mauricio Macri called the US president-elect to congratulate him on his victory.



Local media reports have alleged that Trump asked Macri for help over a stalled construction permit for a 35-storey project called Trump Office in downtown Buenos Aires. A source told the Guardian that the information came from Macri’s staff.

“Trump asked him to authorize a building he’s constructing in Buenos Aires – it wasn’t just geopolitical chat,” said journalist Jorge Lanata on his Sunday night news programme, Periodismo Para Todos.

According the programme, the Buenos Aires building project became bogged down in bureaucratic red tape earlier this year, and was raised by Trump during the telephone call last Monday.

“Macri told Trump that Argentina is welcoming foreign investment now, and Trump replied that he has a $150m investment in Argentina stalled because of a building permit in Buenos Aires,” journalist Romina Manguel, who described the alleged conversation on the programme, told the Guardian.

Macri’s spokesman, Iván Pavlovsky, denied the report. “Macri did not speak to Donald Trump about the building of the tower,” he said. “They only talked about continuing the relationship between the two countries and recalled their personal relationship from years ago.”

Trump has insisted that he will not use the White House for personal profits, saying that after inauguration, he will let three of his children –Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric – run his business interests while he attends to the duties of commander in chief.

But the Trump children are on his transition team and concerns have been raised that the president-elect is already mixing business interests and official duties.

The Economic Times reported that he met last week with business partners who are building Trump-branded apartments in India, while dozens of foreign diplomats reportedly attended a sales pitch last week at Trump’s new hotel in downtown Washington DC.



Like Trump, Macri was born into a wealthy immigrant family, and the two leaders have had a long personal and business acquaintance. They first met in the 1980s when Macri’s father, Francisco Macri, sold his stake in the Lincoln West housing and office development in New York to Trump.



“The Macri team had plenty of brainpower,” Trump wrote in his book The Art of the Deal, which dedicates a long section to his dealings with the father-and-son business tandem. “What they lacked was practical experience, especially in New York City, where it is so difficult to do any sort of real estate development.”

In his own memoirs, Francisco Macri also described his business relationship with Trump, recalling how the real estate tycoon broke his golf clubs in frustration after Mauricio beat him in a golf game during a complicated business negotiation in the 1980s in New York.

But despite such setbacks, the relationship remains close enough that President Macri spoke with Ivanka Trump during last Monday’s phone conversation. “In the call, I also talked with his daughter,” Macri told the Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun. “I have known her since her infant days.”

Macri’s spokesman said that the Argentinian president did not discuss Trump Office with Ivanka Trump either.

“He spoke with Ivanka only briefly to say hello because he met her when she

was just a kid,” the spokesman said. “They did not speak about it. The president doesn’t speak about city building permits.”

Trump Office is slated to be built near the city’s landmark 235ft Obelisk, on 9 de Julio avenue, the widest avenue in the world.

The project is in the hands of YY Development Group, an Argentinian real estate firm headed by lawyer and businessman Felipe Yaryura, who met Trump in 2011. The firm is also currently building Trump Tower Punta del Este, a luxury 157-apartment block in the Uruguayan beach resort of Punta del Este, playground for the rich and famous of both Argentina and Brazil.

Although Yaryura was not available for comment, he has in several recent interviews said that he is especially close with Trump’s son Eric, who has visited Argentina a number of times.

Yaryura believes Trump’s election will be good for Argentina because of the personal relationship between the two leaders. “The personal relationship with Macri will have an influence, Trump has affection for Macri,” Yaryura told the daily Clarín earlier this month. “He’s always made complimentary comments about Macri.”

Macri has worked hard to re-establish cordial relations with the US after they soured during the previous administration of populist president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.