Two PFA commissioners investigated for theft and extortion are made available

Virginia Messi

07/02/2020 - 16:16

• Clarín.com
• Police

Sometimes life changes very very fast. Until last Monday, Commissioners Lionel Selva and Diego de la Fuente were in charge of the Federal Crime Department of the Federal Police, an area popularly known for carrying out important - and colorful - kidnappings of illegal or contraband merchandise.

A day later - through the Order of the Day N ° 117 of Tuesday June 30th - they were separated and transferred to two freezer destinations . Selva -as attached (without specific functions) - was appointed to the Superintendency of Investigations, while De la Fuente was sent to Area IX Morón to be under the command of Inspector Commissioner Luis Humberto Hernández, brother of the head of the Force.

Perhaps the idea was to have them comfortable and with a low profile, since within the Federal Government, Selva is considered a trusted man of the Commissioner General Juan Carlos Hernández .

But the raids carried out by the Gendarmerie on Wednesday morning at the officers' offices and at their homes sped up the times. Almost around midnight on Wednesday, July 1, their names were included in the Order of the Day No. 118: both were available.

The Order of the Day where the transfers of Lionel Carlos Selva and Diego Fabián De la Fuente, federal police officers involved in an extortion case, were arranged.

By order of the head of the PFA, Selva and De la Fuente went on to review under article 48 of the Federal organic law: "The magazine will be available (...) The administratively summoned for serious causes, if ordered by the police authority competent by itself, or at the request of the disciplinary investigating body until the final resolution is issued, and may be left without effect during the procedure . "

Although the case against both police chiefs exploded publicly on Wednesday, when the search warrants were issued by the Economic Criminal Court 2, the investigation took several months.

The availability of Diego de la Fuente and Lionel Selva, former PFA Federal Crime Chiefs.

It all started with a complaint from the Samsung company at the beginning of the year to investigate the possible smuggling of high-end cell phone devices of that brand.

The case, filed in Economic Criminal Court No. 2, was entrusted to Federal Crimes and led to the search of a major merchant from the Orthodox Jewish community.

The cigarettes kidnapped from Diego de la Fuente and Lionel Selva, former PFA Federal Crime chiefs.

This man would have suffered the theft of $ 10,000, electronic material, and also police mockery for his religious beliefs. However, it was not he who denounced the police.

Shortly thereafter, an anonymous email arrived at the court's email address stating that in the raid on the Samsung case, the policemen had stolen $ 10,000 and insulted and extorted the merchant who was selling the contraband devices. That same anonymous one maintained that all the business went up in the police hierarchy until it reached the commissioner general Juan Carlos Hernández . 

After weeks of investigation carried out in the midst of a pandemic, it was time for the raids. These were aimed at gathering evidence since there were no arrest warrants. Apparently, the idea of ​​the court would be to gather elements and then transfer the case to the federal jurisdiction , which is what makes it possible to investigate police officials.

There are already some coincidental statements in the file and the raids on Wednesday were considered successful. An example was what happened in one of the addresses related to Commissar De la Fuente, in Castelar. He was not present because he is admitted to the Churruca Hospital with a positive Covid-19 diagnosis.

Juan Carlos Hernández, chief of the Argentine Federal Police.

There, in Castelar, in a family car parked in front of his father's house, nearly six thousand packages of cigarettes of a second brand of Industria Nacional were seized . In the same place were found slippers, razors and 700,000 thousand pesos .

"The suspicions are that they are merchandise from different causes of the Economic Criminal Court that were stolen instead of having been kidnapped. That is why there will be an expertise and tracking of that merchandise," sources in the case explained to Clarín .

Perhaps the darkest detail of Wednesday's operations occurred in a raid in Ituzaingo. There, according to the Gendarmerie report, the inspector commissioner Luis Humberto Hernández (brother of the head of the PFA) was present.

As head of the Morón area of ​​the Federal Police, the Gendarmerie procedure was being carried out in his jurisdiction. That is a fact. Another no less important thing is that one of those involved had been put under his wing just hours before.

EMJ