Carpetazos and pressures, the K strategy to end those sorry for corruption

Nicolás Wiñazki

02/22/2020 - 22:36

• Clarín.com
• Politics

According to the rules that applied until Thursday, disseminating the conditions in which a member of the Witness Protection Plan lives was considered a serious irregularity . The laws on the subject determined that neither the officials in charge of those persons who provided valuable information to unveil cases of drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, crimes against humanity, money laundering, or corruption, should be guarded so that their lives do not run danger.

They are decisions of the Justice that the State had the obligation to fulfill. No longer. Or it is not known. Those women and men, many of them confessed criminals, risked his life, and that of his family, to help judicial investigators unveil crime plots, as corroborated by Justice. These processes had delicate deselances. People who ended up in prison. Others who could go to prison. And many more to whom the statements of the "repentant" ruined their clandestine businesses .

The potential risks of the informers, who by becoming "repentant" or by simply witnessing the crimes of others, obtain benefits granted by Justice. For example, payments to live a new life , although restricted and under surveillance and with little control of personal freedoms, and those of direct family members, among other variables. One of them moved abroad. That way he would be safer than living in the same country as his enemies. The expenses are borne by the Ministry of Justice.

This week, in Argentina it was demonstrated once again that the Government is also the State. Among the witnesses in danger are many of the "repentant" who affected the procedural situation of the former and current management K. Chocó interests . The one that determined the responsibility of the authorities on duty to prevent other lives from taking potential risks did not prevail. Weighed more the annoyance it means for a government to take care of those who testified against "partners" today prisoners . This action is concatenated to others that point to the same end. Given information that should be confidential about the new life of the members of the "Witness and Imputed Protection Program", added to press and judicial operations to, according to those affected, harm them, they decided to take care by their own means to be under the guard of monitors who are not impartial. Or at least inefficient.

Laura Muñoz, protected witness in the Ciccone I case. Photo: Clarin Archive

The "Witness Protection Program", as it was known, no longer exists. Several repentant "celebrities" preferred to announce that they would take care of themselves before continuing under the protection of a State they consider threatening. The Christian wing of the Government repealed a decree that was never put into practice. It had been prepared by the management of Macri, so that the Program was autonomous from the Executive. It is still under the control of the Ministry of Justice.

It all happened after a self-identified website with Cristina Kirchner first published information that by law should be confidential from two famous “repentant”. Secret data of the allegedly protected Leonardo Fariña, imputed collaborator who helped unveil the plot of the money laundering cause known as La Ruta del Dinero K., was also published classified information, and even photos, of one of the addresses “Insurance” in which former remitter Oscar Centeno, author of the annotations that were the crucial skeleton of the case known as Los Cuadernos de las Coimas, came to live.

The final outcome occurred when the same web K disclosed the file - also reserved - by Alejandro Paul Vandenbroele, repented in the legal cases that complicate former Vice President Amado Boudou. That website accused Vandenbroele of having declared against Boudou instigated by an illegal payment of the macro management that allowed him to buy a boutique hotel. In a dialogue with Clarín , Vandenbroele denied that his sayings as “imputed collaborator”, accepted by federal judge Ariel Lijo, are the product of a financial ambition based also on illegal payments. “I declared without being coerced by anyone, and nobody bought me a boutique hotel . I rented with my family's help a land that had a house and an inn with two rooms, ”he complained.

José López, repentant protected in the cause Cuadernos de las coimas. Photo: Maxi Failla

The repentant did accept having received money from the “Witness Protection Program” because that is what the law that created that plan stipulates. Vandenbroele announced to Justice on Thursday that he was leaving the Witness and Imputed Protection Program. It will drive a complaint to find out who and how your confidential file was leaked. He considers that all his misfortune is part of a broader plan to frighten the rest of the repentant , discredit him personally to benefit the Boudou prisoner, and also to try to avoid that new witnesses or accused in corruption cases decide to tell what They know in exchange for procedural benefits.

Vandenbroele was convicted in the oral trial of the Ciccone case, in which he confessed for four hours thousands of details of the operations he carried out to generate illegal business for Boudou via his best friend and partner, the sudden millionaire and also prisoner José María Núñez Carmona. In addition to the leaks of his secret file, Vandenbroele was accused, without evidence, of being a repentant bought by the new president of the Council of the Magistracy, the federal cameraman Alberto Lugones.

The day after Vandenbroele defended himself in the media against the accusations against him, the Government repealed a decree of Macri that changed that plan to make him independent from the Executive Power. That same day, the secretary of Justice, Juan Mena, entered with a public notary to the offices where the Program operated, which always remained under the control of the ministry, and dismissed the director who was in charge of the care of witnesses and repentants. It also displaced the rest of the employees. Now the place is loyal to him , said sources of the entity in which Mena works. When he broke into the Program headquarters, he was accompanied by people who only identified with his first name. Mena ordered “lacrar” the computers where the secret files that were already proven were not kept, and took full control of that dependence.

Oscar Centeno, repentant protected in the Cuadernos de las Coimas case.

In public statements that do not appear to be the result of chance, nor of judicial information that did not occur on the case, Mena assured a radio station that the Vandenbroele case had violated the rules of the Program , and announced that he would review each file of the 233 repentant and witnesses that the State previously protected. "It's a threat," Vandenbroele returned. Mena did not explain how he undoubtedly sentenced that Vandebroele and the former ministry authorities committed a crime. He said the Program had become "an investment agency." And he added that the whole unit worked "badly", "irregularly" and "illegally."

The norms repealed by their own Government stipulate that “reporters” or witnesses of cases of corruption, money laundering, trafficking in persons, extortive kidnappings, crimes against humanity and drug trafficking could receive money for six months, twelve months, or thirty and six months.

The next day, the website El Destape returned to air details of a regret that Christianity detests, Oscar Centeno, the former sender of the former deputy secretary of Federal Planning Coordination, Roberto Baratta, author of the annotations and filming that were skeletons of the Notebooks de las Coimas, for which Cristina ended up prosecuted and awaits an oral trial accused of being head of an illicit association that used state media to collect bribes.

Ibar Pérez Corradi, repentant protected in the cause by smuggling ephedrine.

That happened already with the Program intervened by Mena. Former Deputy Chief of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), the official placed more emphasis on the alleged crimes committed by Vandenbroele than on the disclosure of information that put the defendant's life at risk. Nothing even said of Centeno or Fariña. For months, in various judicial cases, Christianity tried to discredit the repentant of the Cuadernos case and also Fariña . Now the targeted is Vandenbroele. The scenario coincides with the public insistence that Boudou leave the prison because he is considered, from the perspective of the CFK wing of the Government, as a "political prisoner."

Clarín is in a position to affirm, thanks to sources that know how Centeno lives, that since December, in coincidence with the change of government, the Program stopped paying him the money he agreed to be given to face a new life . The same happened to another member of the same government plan, whose name will not be disclosed: suddenly, and without warning, he stopped receiving the money he used to rent a place to work in custody. The operator of the Program that was in charge of your security did not answer the calls. And that was added to the cell phone that had been assigned, which included a GPS for the headquarters always knew where it was.

Leonardo Fariña, repentant in the cause The route of money K. Photo: EFE

The Civic Coalition, led by Elisa Carrió, sent an email to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) an email that will then be formalized in a mailing, in which he alerted that court about what was happening with the witnesses of cases of corruption in the new Peronist government. Given the description of several facts narrated in this note, which could be added to others that were not included in that letter, the text argues that what happened with the Program “could configure an imminent risk to the human rights of citizens of our country". And they add: "We are facing a clear process of deactivation or violation of the System of Protection of Witnesses and Imputed collaborators." Vandenbroele told this newspaper that he will send another letter to the IACHR on his case.

When Cristina left power, the Witness and Imputed Protection Program guarded only 41 people , with three cars in disrepair, outdated computers and easy to intrude, and even "witnessed" a witness who had died in 2012. Mena may discover that legal funding for justice aides included moving one of them abroad. With expenses paid by the State. And even a business was installed so that a witness could make a living: an ice cream shop. The Government he represents produced the strange paradox that regrets of organized crime, or witnesses of serious crimes, abandon a state protection program because they feel safer without custody of power.