José Luis Manzano


José Luis Manzano is an Argentine businessman and former politician. He is currently a partner in the second largest multimedia group in his country, Grupo América, and has investments in several economic sectors, including energy, wine, and apparel.
Born in Tupungato, Mendoza, he studied medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and specialized in occupational medicine, and later completed two postgraduate programs at Georgetown University in the United States.
He had outstanding experience in the civil service. Between 1983 and 1989 he was national deputy for Mendoza Province; in the Lower House of the Congress of the Argentine Nation, he presided over the block of the Justicialista Party. Between 1989 and 1993 he was party secretary. Between 1989 and 1992 he served as Minister of Interior in the cabinet of President Carlos Saúl Menem.
In 1996 Manzano joined with business partners to form a powerful media group, Grupo América, which quickly grew to its spot today as the second largest media company in Argentina. The firm owns 49 media outlets from all over Argentina and includes radio, TV, digital content, and graphics.
In 2007, Manzano and Vila founded Andes Energy, an oil company which includes Alfredo Vila, Luis Nofal and Jorge Aidar Bestene on its board.
He is also the president of Integra Capital, an international investment services firm. Manzano is an experienced investor and frequently speaks around the world on issues such as investment, media, energy and distressed industries, according to the firm.

Education and academic activities

José Luis Manzano studied Medicine at the National University of Cuyo. He was a visiting scholar at both Georgetown University and the University of California, San Diego. He has lectured at prestigious universities in Argentina, Japan, Europe and the United States and has received several international awards.
He is also president of the Postgraduates Foundation of the Congress, in Mendoza, where he was a former member of its administration board.

Business activities

Media

Resettling in Argentina in 1996, Manzano and entrepreneur Daniel Vila created UNO Medios, also known as Grupo Uno or Group Vila-Manzano. They also established Supercanal Holding AS, now valued at more than $800 million.
Grupo Uno acquired the Buenos Aires-based TV channel América 2, in partnership with the politician and businessman Francisco de Narvaez. Manzano and Vila developed Grupo Uno into the second-largest media group in Argentina. By the end of the 90s, it controlled the principal channels of the Cuyo region: Channel 7, Channel 8 and Channel 6. Today Grupo Uno consists of 40 media outlets throughout the country, including press, radio, television, and digital enterprises. Among the major channels is América 2, located in Buenos Aires, whose operation license was renewed during President Néstor Kirchner's administration. Through all of its media outlets, Grupo Uno reaches around 25 million people in Argentina. In addition, it is also a service supplier of Triple Play through the company Supercanal. Some 450,000 people in 14 Argentinian provinces subscribe to its services.
The Vila-Manzano group also bought into cable operations abroad. In 1977 it acquired 25% of Procono in Spain, and in 1997 formed Supercanal Cable Spain. The group also purchased VVC, Alvarez & Alvarez, Video Selimn, MEG, Electro Audio and Imagem Teresopolis, CATV Sat LITD, and Televisao Spectrum Systems, all in Brazil. In addition, the group owns cable operations in Bolivia and owns Dominican Supercanal in the Dominican Republic. The group owns or has owned part of the magazine Primera Fila, the newspapers La Capital de Rosario and New Time, Paraná, and various radio stations.
Grupo Uno has 28 licenses between AM, FM and open television broadcasting. Manzano and Vila control channel América and its cable TV channel América24, La Red radio and newspaper networks including La Capital del Rosario and Diario UNO in Entre Rios, Mendoza and Santa Fe. With its extensive network of media services, the company reaches about 25 million people in Argentina and thus constitutes the second largest multimedia group in the country.
As one of the key owners of Grupo Uno, Manzano led the partnership with China Watch, a media outlet of news and analysis about China's business, society and culture. China Watch became the first Spanish-spoken media about China.

Holdings

As of 2001, the Vila-Manzano group, through Supercanal Holding SA and other firms, controlled the following cable-TV enterprises in the locations indicated:
The group also owns or has owned the magazine Primera Fila, in Mendoza; the daily newspapers La Capital and El Ciudadano, Rosario; el periódico Nueva Hora de Paraná; Canal 7 in Mendoza, Canal 8, Radio AM Calingasta and Radio FM Nuestra, in San Juan; Megavisión SA and Radio Rivadavia, among others.

Energy and oil

Manzano and Vila are also leaders in the electricity sector through Edemsa, a private-public company that provides electricity to Mendoza province. The two men created Andes Energía, a Latin American energy group dedicated to the exploration, development and production of conventional and non-conventional oil and gas. The company operates in Argentina with 24 licenses. In Colombia, it currently has 11 licenses for oil investments. The company is listed on the stock exchanges in London and Buenos Aires, and is part of an operating holding company with subsidiaries including Kilwer, Ketsal, Grecoil and Interoil.
In July 2017, Andes Energía merged with Petrolera El Trebol, an Argentine subsidiary of Switzerland's Mercuria. The merger created the new company Phoenix Global Resources and it has a strong presence in the country's most prolific conventional and non-conventional oil basins. Its main objective is the development of the Vaca Muerta field in both Neuquén and Mendoza.
Manzano and Vila managed to close an agreement between the Andes and Mercuria, one of the largest hydrocarbon traders in the world, consisting of two loans totaling $60 million, the first of which will allow it to settle a debt of $20 million USD to finance drilling activities in Chachaheun, Argentina, and the second is a $40 million USD credit line to finance drilling activities throughout the Andes portfolio, including its Vaca Muerta, Argentina surface.
In addition, Manzano has investments in the oil sector through the firm Ketsal/Kilwer. Within the last few years, the business has been awarded exploitation contracts in southern Argentina, an area of great oil extraction potential.
Manzano and Vila also control Hidroeléctrica Ameghino S.A. in Chubut Province. The plant is connected to the Patagonic Electric System and provides an annual 174 Gwh of electricity.
In 2013, Vila and Manzano bought 49.9% of the UTE led by El Trebol to exploit the Chañares Herrados and Puesto Pozo Cercado deposits in Tupungato. The operation was carried out with Mercuria, the holding company owner of El Trébol. They signed an agreement with a Brazilian oil company named Imetame Energia to explore their fields in Brazil.

Building

Manzano also works with Vila in the construction industry through their industrial construction company Pamar SA, which specializes in building gas pipelines and has more than 35 years of experience in the market. Pamar works in Latin American countries creating oil and gas pipelines, process plants, electricity distribution networks, fiber optic networks and sanitation works. Pamar S.A. was recognized as the leader of the "Central West Gas Pipeline System", the largest of its kind in Argentina, covering more than 500 kilometers. Its biggest customers are YPF, TGS, TGN and EDEMSA.
The Vila-Manzano group became part of Metrogas, after British Gas agreed to sell its holdings to the company Integra Gas Distribution LLC, owned by the Mendoza holding company. Integra is the second largest shareholder of the company after YPF.
Metrogas distributes more than 19% of the total gas supplied in the country and is the only gas distribution service provider in and around Buenos Aires. It covers more than 2,150 square kilometers and has 15,800 kilometers of pipeline. It has more than 2.3 million customers.

Wine production

In 1998, Manzano entered the wine industry. He created Grupo Vitivinícola de Tupungato, which operates Los Algarrobos estate in San Juan, and vineyards and a winery in Tupungato, Mendoza.
The winery owns 1,533 hectares of fields which are located around 1,200–1,500 meters above sea level. Thirty hectares are taken up by vineyards, which produce raw materials for the wines that are sold in domestic and foreign markets. The winery has an output capacity of 1 million liters of wine per year.
In the same building as the winery is a restaurant known as La Tupiña in Gualtallary, owned by the Viticulture Group of Tupungato.

Political activities

Manzano was active in Argentinian politics during the 1980s and 90s. He was a founder and an active member of the Peronist political party. When democracy returned to Argentina, the party was defeated at the ballot box, after which Manzano helped consolidate and strengthen the party. One source describes him as "the symbol of the late-80s renewal of Peronism."
In 1983 he was the Argentine national deputy. As a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the nation, he participated in the approval of the legislative bill on the modification of the civil marriage regime, being one of the main speakers of the discussion sessions prior to the final sanction of Law 23,515 in 1987.
His defense of the possibility of marrying after separation and of individual liberties was documented in a speech he gave on August 19, 1986, where he affirmed his belief in the importance of responsible liberty:
"We want adult liberty, responsible freedom for the Argentines, and that those who want to re-bet on love and family, instead of having the comfortable situation of separation without assuming responsibilities, to assume together with Argentine society these two issues, that we do not understand separated because in the justicialismo we learned to live them together: freedom and responsibility When we speak of liberation, we are referring to the fact that as a nation and as a people each of us has to opt for more things every day, that every day he must make the renunciation that he must make to his individual freedom in order to build together collective freedom.
He also referred to the importance of consensus for the country. "When they say that it is not possible, we will say that it can. And that day, when we finish learning the lesson that the motor is the consensus, what better is to close the ears to the lobbyists and open them to the clearest voices of Argentine society – those who come from the people, the only legitimate source – we can together rediscover many things And then we can rediscover together that dreaming is not crazy and that dreams are possible."
In 1991, as Minister of the Interior and leader of the federal security forces, he played a key role in investigating the abduction of the businessman Mauricio Macri.
In 2008 Manzano was honored in Argentina's parliament along with other former members for helping to reconstruct Argentina's returning democracy.

United States

From 1993 to 1995 Manzano lived in California where he began to develop his career in the private sector acting as an international consultant. He lived in Washington, D.C in 1994 where he joined the Republican Party. In 1995, he studied English and American domestic policy at the University of San Diego, and created a consulting firm called Integra Investments S.A., where he serves as the company's president. Integra Investments has offices in Washington, Miami, Buenos Aires and Mendoza. In late 1995, after spending two years away from Argentina, he returned home with plans of pursuing a business career.

Allegations

The Vila-Manzano media group, and its principals, have been repeatedly accused of alleged fraud, censorship of TV programmes, money laundering, unfair dismissal, wire tapping, and tax evasion. There is no evidence that those accusations have been corroborated, proven, or have moved forward in any meaningful way.
In 2000, for example, Orlando Vignatti, a holding member of La Capital Multimedios, sued Manzano and Vila, alleging that they committed fraud and conspiracy in a deal involving shares of several radio stations and the newspaper La Capital de Rosario. Vila said that Vignatti was not happy with his 25 percent interest ownership in the company that Vila and Manzano had given him through a contract, but Vila said that "we showed him that it was fair, he even asked to be general manager and we granted it". After Vignatti filed the lawsuit, another meeting between the parties was agreed to, but Vignatti did not attend "for personal reasons," according to the Argentinian newspaper Página/12. Among the documentation presented as evidence, Vignatti submitted a fax that Vila allegedly sent him from the newspaper La Capital. "I never sent a fax like that!" Vila responded when asked by a reporter.
The next year, Carlos María Lagos, the former owner of the newspaper, filed a complaint in which he alleged that Manzano and Vila "depleted" the company's funds. Santa Fe Justice investigated a "possible emptying of the firm", according to the Los Andes Argentinian news website. In response, Vila told Los Andes that "everyone who has a commercial claim, uses criminal justice extortively and then a smear campaign through the media... such as Clarín, La Nación and The Andes." According to Los Andes, the dispute between Lagos and Vila-Manzano is centered around how shares of the company were distributed and disputes about company expenses..
Both Vignatti and Lagos had their own issues with the justice system, when Vignatti's properties were attached in 2016 and when Lagos was investigated for his management of La Capital.
In 2001, Bernardo Martín Rutti, a former associate of Manzano and Vila, reported the two men to the Federal Administration of Public Revenue. Rutti alleged that they laundered more than $400 million that Manzano, Rutti alleged, had "illegally obtained" during his time in public service. Rutti attempted to attribute what he called “the prodigious growth of the Vila-Manzano group” to his own unproven allegations of wrongdoing regarding the "true ownership" of, and source of the funds for, some of the Vila-Manzano companies. Rutti's main argument was the subjective unsubstantiated claim that the Vila-Manzano group "had a rapid and unjustified economic growth" by buying large amount of cables in the interior of the country, with an investment of the order of 300 million provided by Manzano."

Links to Kirchners and others

An opinion article published in August 2012 in La Nación described Manzano, according to the viewpoint of the opinion article author Joseph Crettaz, as an "old political friend of current officials, legislators and judges" who, despite his "low public profile," is very actively involved with the powers that be. For instance, the relationship of Grupo Uno with the banker Raúl Moneta was mentioned in an opinion article with no byline. The opinion article about the “scandals” surrounding Moneta's “dubious” banking group noted Moneta's business relationship to Manzano, while adding that it is “difficult to determine” precisely what the nature of that relationship is.
An article in Perfil, an Argentine tabloid newspaper, said that Horacio Verbitsky, in one of his articles in Página/12, mentioned Manzano's "very close connections to the Casa Rosada" during the administrations of the late Argentine president Néstor Kirchner and the former president, Cristina Férnandez Kirchner. The La Nación newspaper, which was in a strong dispute with the former government, identified as Manzano's “concrete achievements” under both presidencies his ability to secure cable television licenses beyond the legal limits, the government's pardoning of his tax debts, his obtaining of government advertising on the media he owns, and a privileged position in regard to obtaining a mobile-phone concession.

Cablevision raid and aftermath

In 2004 in Argentina, the largest media companies were Cablevisión, Multicanal, and Supercanal, which was jointly owned by Vila-Manzano and Clarín. Vila-Manzano later sold Multicanal to a joint-venture between Clarín and Fintech, a U.S. investment fund.
During the Nestor Kirchner administration, Multicanal and Cablevisión merged under the ownership of Grupo Clarín. In 2011, Grupo Vila-Manzano filed a complaint with a court in Mendoza Province that alleged "anticompetitive" practices by Cablevisión, which was owned by Grupo Clarín, a media conglomerate. In response to the complaint, Mendoza judge Walter Bento ordered the breakup of Cablevisión and Multicanal and appointed a judicial co-administrator to oversee the division of the two companies.
On December 23, 2011, Cablevisión pressed charges against Bento with the Judiciary Council, calling for his impeachment.
In 2012, the Federal Civil and Commercial Chamber of the Federal Capital ruled against Judge Bento's order, thus terminating the intervention into Cablevisión that began in 2011.
Some Argentinian media published news articles opposing Vila-Manzano's position and supporting Grupo Clarín's position in the dispute. For example:
José Luis Manzano contributes to social, cultural and educational causes. He works with the Vendimia Solidaria program, which works toward the development of children and adolescents in the Province of Mendoza by providing financial assistance and promoting actions for the benefit of hospitals, neighborhood sports clubs and schools.
He also participates in the La Capital Foundation, a Rosario organization whose objective is to promote and disseminate spaces for cultural production, debate and academic formation and promote volunteering and social responsibility.
Manzano is sponsor of the House of Chinese Culture in Buenos Aires and president of the foundation of the University of Congress. He has also contributed to the Clinton Foundation and to The Climate Reality Project, a foundation founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore that seeks to raise awareness about environmental issues such as climate change.

Personal life

On February 21, 2015, José Luis Manzano, who is Christian, married with Teresa Jordan, who is his partner since 2000. The event was held at his estate in Gualtallary, Tupungato.
The businessman has 4 children: Juana Schindler, Silvestre Schindler, Maria de la Paz Manzano and Antonio Jordan.