“If I was a Nazi, I regret it”: who is Rodolfo Barra, Javier Milei’s Treasury prosecutor

The former Minister of Justice and former judge of the automatic majority Court will be in charge of the State Attorney’s Office. His Nazi past kept him away from the flashes at the end of the 90’s: he had to resign after Página|12 revealed that he had participated in the attack to a synagogue.

“If I was a Nazi, I regret it”. The phrase belongs to former Minister of Justice Rodolfo Barra and was pronounced as a defense, cornered after Página|12 revealed his Nazi past, which included the attack to a synagogue during his youth. It was the middle of the 90’s and Barra, an untouchable of Carlos Menem, had to step aside. Almost three decades later, Barra will return to the bowels of power: Javier Milei appointed him Treasury Attorney, one of the key positions in the government’s administration that will take office on December 10.

Barra’s appointment was confirmed by the Office of the President Elect, through the social network X (formerly Twitter). He is not a newcomer to politics, far from it, but has a very long career in right-wing Peronism, public offices and political power, everything that Milei called the “caste”: he was a judge of the Supreme Court of the automatic majority at the beginning of the 90’s and then Minister of Justice under Menem.

Barra’s career is long and full of ephemeris and curious facts. To begin with, he was one of the hard men of the Menemist decade. He was part of the famous “automatic majority” of the Supreme Court between 1989 and 1993, where he landed after a brief stint as Deputy Minister of the Interior and after serving as Deputy Minister of Public Works and Services as Roberto Dromi’s right-hand man, the famous “father of privatizations”.