Daniel Santoro
10/20/2020 8:35 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 10/20/2020 9:52 PM
Felix Crous removed a key ability
of the
Anticorruption Office (OA)
that is in the decree of necessity and urgency (DNU) of its creation by former president Fernando De la Rúa, supported (in this) by Chacho Alvarez, from 1999: to participate in
"strategic litigation"
in which there is damage to the State
, to society from high-ranking officials.
The OA was one of the flags with which the Alliance won the 1999 elections to
activate the causes of corruption
against former president Carlos Menem and his officials who slept the sleep of the just in Comodoro Py.
Article 2, subsection E, of De la Rúa decree number 102 of 1992 says that the OA may "become a
plaintiff
in processes in which the State's assets are affected, within the scope of its competence."
So, if Crous - who ceased to depend on the Ministry of Justice and passed into the direct orbit of President Alberto Fernández - wishes to formally annul that power, he can do so but
with a presidential DNU, not with a simple resolution
.
It is a DNU, it is not the Public Ethics law.
But of course, the process through a DNU
would have a higher political cost
.
Not even Julio Vitobello, current secretary general of the Presidential and former head of the OA between 2008 and 2015, dared as much as Crous.
That De la Rúa decree, plus another extension, gave the OA
“concurrent powers”
to the national prosecutor's office for administrative investigations with the power to sue in defense of the State.
In parentheses, many judges and prosecutors
denied the OA legitimacy in corruption cases,
until the Court gave it to them in the ruling of the former head of the Casa de la Moneda, Armando Gostanián.
It is that an active and complainant OA
annoys
some judges and prosecutors, officials and businessmen - as happened in the management of Laura Alonso - who want to draw up causes to allow impunity for corruption and
that is the bottom of the Crous resolution.
Being a plaintiff means asking for evidence, pushing the case, requesting convictions, and more.
And for that
, OA
lawyers are needed
to write briefs and collaborate with prosecutors who, many times, are surpassed by armies of private lawyers paid by fortunes made with black money, in a vicious circle that is difficult to break.
Crous
fired
directors, coordinators and lawyers hired to follow these causes and
now argues that the "personal lack"
to continue with this task, which, in many cases,
harms Vice President Cristina Kirchner.
Behind the Crous resolution
there are more than 100 former K officials prosecuted who feel the OA as a gadfly
and want these cases to be 16 years old again as they were before 2015 ...
But it is not just a problem of paying political costs and sincere the intention to change the profile and create, instead of the OA,
a simple Ethics office that only receives and controls the affidavits of assets
.
The problem that this decision will have also has
international consequences
.
The OA must also ensure that Argentina respects international public transparency agreements.
For this reason, in the supervisions of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) they have already begun to ask the national government about these commitments, attacks on Justice and other issues that are directly related to
their green light to recommend, or not, international investments.