Lucia Salinas
02/20/2020 - 12:47
- Clarín.com
- Politics
"Nobody paid me or offered me money to testify against Amado Boudou ," Alejandro Vandenbroele told TN this Wednesday. The former head of The Old Fund said that "the plan to stay with Ciccone was from the K government," and that "the idea was to make money for African countries." In the interview, he made his discharge on the accusation against him regarding an alleged payment of money to "buy" his testimony as a defendant collaborator in a case linked to the Ciccone case. That complaint had been left to Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi, who on Thursday decided to refer it to his partner Ariel Lijo . This magistrate was the one who in 2017 approved the agreement so that Vandenbroele is repentant.
The discussion that began in the news portal El Destape ended up in the Courts of Comodoro Py, the same place where at the end of 2017 Vandenbroele - designated as a front man of Amado Boudou - appeared before prosecutor Jorge Di Lello to become an accused collaborator.
After learning about the newspaper article and after a series of statements by the lawyers of the former vice president of Cristina Kirchner, who claimed that there was "something strange" behind the Vandenbroele collaboration agreement , federal judge Ariel Lijo requested that the government investigate Mauricio Macri "bought" the confession of the owner of The Old Fund with the payment of a boutique hotel.
Last week, prosecutor Paloma Ochoa opened the investigation and in her request before Martínez De Giorgi said that the case should be investigated by Lijo, where the businessman was accepted as a defendant collaborator.
The Destape had revealed reserved details of Vandenbroele's file as a member of the protected witness program of the Ministry of Justice. The prosecutor considered that it is appropriate to investigate whether Vandenbroele's file worked as the basis of an illegal act, to harm Boudou's confession.
The former vice president was investigated by Lijo, and after an oral trial he was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison for the appropriation of the Ciccone printing press, the reduction of his large debts with the AFIP and his subsequent contracting with the State to print paper money. The magistrate also instructed the causes for the irregular contract of the province of Formosa with the company with which Boudou bought Ciccone, The Old Fund, and the organization to finance that purchase, a cause known as Ciccone II and which is still open.
In the framework of these investigations, Lijo was the one who in 2017 approved Vandenbroele's confession as "imputed collaborator" in the Formosa case, which was still under his responsibility. The head of The Old Fun had confessed to prosecutor Jorge Di Lello. Although the oral trial by Ciccone had just begun, the former vice-president also provided data and documents that added to the evidence that already existed against Boudou.
It is for these reasons, that prosecutor Ochoa stated that as there is a section of the investigation that Judge Ariel Lijo is still in charge of, where Vandenbroele's sayings were used "possibly vitiated according to the testimonies that initiated the case, and that were aired, valued and used to substantiate sentences, "the case must be based on that court.
This Thursday Judge Martínez De Giorgi made the request of the Prosecutor and the file was sent to the Court of Lijo. Judicial sources indicated to Clarín , that in the first place the arguments of that derivation will be analyzed, and then Lijo will decide if he receives the case. Otherwise, it will be the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber that must determine which judge will investigate the issue.
The proposal also arises in the midst of the Government's decision to regain control of the Witnesses and Protected Persons program. Eleven days before leaving the presidency, and by Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), Mauricio Macri had created an agency to remove that program from the orbit of the Executive Power, giving intervention to Justice in a kind of tripartite body.
It is a program that has as a rule the absolute reserve of all the files of its members . In our country there are more than 300 witnesses and defendants protected, and only 13 are in cases of corruption, including Vandenbroele and his ex-wife, Laura Muñoz who was the first to speak about the Ciccone case.
For the prosecutor Ochoa, to be able to carry out the investigation, it is necessary to have access to Alejandro Vandenbroele's file, something that, according to article 9 bis of the witness protection law - introduced by DNU in November last year - " only those who intervene in the legal cases in which the protection was provided may do ".
The law that governs the program determines that the domicile, activities and names of the custodial staff of witnesses and accused collaborators are confidential . But part of that data was published, including the documentation according to which Vandenbroele would have requested 1.5 million pesos from the Program to finance the purchase of a hotel in Mendoza, and claimed that the repentant would have received at least part of the money he requested.