Oscar Aguad (born May 7, 1950) is an Argentine politician from the Radical Civic Union (UCR) who served as Argentina’s Minister of Defense from 2017 to 2019. He was elected to the lower house of Congress, where he became president of the UCR committee and vice president of the chamber.
Aguad was born in Córdoba to Hilda Beily and Raúl Aguad in 1950. In the 1930s, his father opened the first piano retail store in Córdoba and later started an art gallery. Aguad enrolled at the National University of Córdoba and earned a law degree, specializing in corporate, tax, and criminal law. He married María Dolores Albarenque in 1976, and they had five daughters.
He was hired as an associate by José Severo Caballero, a Córdoba jurist who would later be appointed Chief Justice of the Argentine Supreme Court in 1983 by President Raúl Alfonsín. After the 1983 elections, in which the UCR won national and Córdoba offices, Aguad was appointed Chief of Staff by Córdoba mayor Ramón Mestre. Aguad was a board member of La Voz del Interior (Córdoba’s main newspaper) and of the University of Córdoba Foundation. In 1994, he founded Amparo Legal (Legal Protection), a legal aid office, and later opened his own legal practice.
Ramón Mestre would become both a friend and political mentor to Aguad. In 1999, President Fernando de la Rúa appointed Mestre to lead a federal intervention in the politically troubled province of Corrientes and, at Mestre’s recommendation, Aguad was named mayor of Corrientes. Mestre was then transferred to the Ministry of the Interior in March 2001, and Aguad succeeded him. He oversaw new provincial elections and stepped down on December 10, when an elected governor took office.
Aguad was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 2005, and in 2007, his UCR colleagues chose him as president of the party committee.