He was the Secretariat of Intelligence (SIDE) of the Argentine Republic from December 1999 to October 2000, during the first half of Fernando de la Rúa's presidency.
De Santibañes resigned the position after the media discovered the Secretariat's involvement in the Senate Bribery scandal.
[1] Born in Berisso,[1] a working class suburb of La Plata, de Santibañes studied Economics at the Universidad del Salvador and the University of Chicago.
[2] The most serious controversy, however, arose when de Santibañes was implicated in the Argentine Senate bribery scandal of 2000, in which SIDE provided $5 million in cash that was later used to bribe six senators and the Parliamentary Secretary, Mario Pontaquarto, to support a government-sponsored labor law flexibilization bill in April of that year.
[3] De Santibañes reacted by staging a series of television interviews in which he criticized the governing political coalition, the Alliance, declaring it should dissolve because its internal crisis was hampering economic growth.