(CNN Spanish) - The body of the former private secretary of former presidents Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Fabián Gutiérrez, was found this Saturday in a house in Calafate, Santa Cruz province, and according to judge Carlos Narvarte, he was reportedly killed.
Gutiérrez, who lived in the province of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, had provided services for the family of the current Argentine vice president. He was the private secretary of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner during the presidency of her husband, Néstor Kirchner, and left office in 2005, and returned to serve between 2007 and 2010, during the former president's first term. He was prosecuted for the case of the so-called "corruption notebooks" and had declared as repentant in 2018, as recorded in the court record.
At the time of the discovery of Gutiérrez's body, he was buried at the bottom of a property in the Aeropuerto Viejo neighborhood of the tourist town of El Calafate, with a blow to the head and wrapped in a sheet, according to the magistrate.
According to the police, his death would have occurred at Gutiérrez's home in El Calafate and then the body would have been transferred in the victim's vehicle to the property where he was buried and found. Later, the vehicle was returned to Gutiérrez's home.
"Because of the weight of the body and the place where it was buried, more than one person participated here," added the judge, who assured that "the case is a homicide and the motive is being investigated."
At least four young people were arrested for being allegedly involved in the act and, according to the magistrate, they would be acquainted with the victim and one of them would have maintained a "closer" relationship.
Gutiérrez was wanted since this Thursday night, after his mother denounced that he could not find his son. After taking an investigative statement from a young man allegedly known to the former presidential secretary, the investigators managed to find the body. The judge will investigate the other three detainees in the next few hours.
Gutiérrez had been investigated for alleged illicit enrichment, but federal judge Claudio Bonadio dismissed him in late 2011, when Fernández de Kirchner was president of the country. Eight years later, at the end of 2019, the same judge prosecuted him for alleged money laundering of corruption in public works between 2008 and 2018.
In his statement as a defendant collaborator in the cause of the “corruption notebooks,” Gutiérrez had said that during his years as Fernández de Kirchner's private secretary, he witnessed how then-President Néstor Kirchner received bags and backpacks from two of his officials and that These were transferred by ex-secretary Daniel Muñoz to the couple's homes in Santa Cruz. He said he never saw the contents of the recurring bags that the exmandatario received, according to the minutes of his statement.
The Secretary of Justice of the Alberto Fernández government, Juan Martín Mena, spoke after the appearance of Gutiérrez's body and stated that "making conjectures and an immediate political connection speaks of the personal baseness" of the opposition leaders and considered that "it is very premature and irresponsible to venture any issue ”. In addition, he maintained that "the investigation of the competent authorities corresponds" and clarified that "from the Ministry of Justice we do not work on this issue" because "it does not correspond". "We must try to be extremely careful," he said in statements to the Toma y Daca radio program.
The investigation is in charge of Judge Narvarte. The prosecutor who intervenes in the file is Natalia Mercado, daughter of the Governor of Santa Cruz, Alicia Kirchner, and niece of Vice President Fernández de Kirchner.
