Lucia Salinas
07/07/2020 - 14:51
- Clarín.com
- Politics
Finally, the national government abandoned its claim that the legality of the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) with which it sought to intervene with the Vicentin Group is resolved in the Buenos Aires federal administrative contentious justice. Last week, Judge María Alejandra Biotti had rejected that claim and decided that the constitutionality of the intervention will be resolved in Santa Fe. The government did not appeal the ruling.
On June 19, the Reconquista commercial judge, Fabián Lorenzini, restored the company's board of directors to the administration, and reduced the role of the auditors appointed by Alberto Fernández -Gabriel Delgado and Luciano Zarich- to that of "controlling watchdogs" . The government, through the Treasury Office, asked that the auditors be reinstated, as well as the province of Santa Fe and Zarich himself.
Meanwhile, the proposal made by Vicentin regarding the supposed unconstitutionality of the DNU that ordered the intervention of the firm was also open. The contest judge himself said that it was "a disruptive situation consisting of the intervention of the administrative body ordered by the National State within the framework of a DNU, with a view to complying with a future and eventual law of expropriation of society or its goodwill ".
Lorenzini understood that he was not the competent judge to decide whether the administrative decision of President Fernández on a company that has its preventive competition open was unconstitutional, as claimed by the cereal company.
It was when the government demanded that this discussion - whose jurisdiction, according to many specialists, is the quintessential administrative dispute - be transferred to the Federal Capital. He did so through a presentation by the Ministry of Productive Development, by Matías Kulfas. The brief was presented before the Buenos Aires federal administrative contentious judge, María Alejandra Biotti, who maintained that the debate on the DNU effectively corresponded to the contentious administrative jurisdiction, but from the province of Santa Fe.
The magistrate understood that it was counterproductive to carry a process 800 kilometers away from where the company in question is based.
The government could appeal this measure, but finally, in a brief - to which Clarín agreed - decided to "consent to the decision" by Judge Biotti, who declared herself "incompetent due to the territory, stating that the proceedings must be filed before the federal courts with jurisdiction in administrative litigation in the town of Avellaneda, Province of Santa Fe ".
Likewise, the Government requested that all proceedings be referred to the administrative court of Santa Fe, with which it is remarking once again that it is not Judge Lorenzini who must rule on the legality or not of the DNU, in opposition to what he intended the Vicentin Group.
Judge Lorenzini is in charge of the preventive bankruptcy of the company that has 2,368 creditors and a debt of 100,000 million pesos. Verification of that debt closes on August 25 , the date after which the magistrate will set the firm's final liability.