Lucia Salinas
07/30/2020 - 14:54
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The prosecutor before the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4), Abel Córdoba, asked Thursday for a 12-year sentence for Lázaro Báez , his four children, and twelve other defendants, in the case that investigates the Money Route K. All are accused of having laundered US $ 60 million between 2010 and 2013.
In his presentation, Córdona argued that the money that went to money laundering operations came in part from the fraud in public works, where Cristina Kichner is judged.
The complaints from the Financial Information Unit (UIF), the AFIP and the Anti-Corruption Office (OA) have already asked for sentences for the businessman: nine years, eight and eight and a half years, respectively. All argued that part of the money that Báez received for the public works was transferred to money laundering operations.
The Money Route K judges the money laundering of 60 million dollars carried out in three stages, whose perpetrators are accused of "joining a gang dedicated to laundering money between 2010 and 2013 aggravated by habituality." The "hoarding of funds in Switzerland" was also taken into account, in addition to the externalization of money and its re-entry into the country.
17 of the accused, including the Báez family, Leonardo Fariña, Federico Elaskar, Fabián Rossi, among others, found them responsible for having built a " complex transnational engineering" that laundered $ 60 million . In his accusation, Córdoba argued that businessman K headed an "organization that was dedicated to moving hidden money."
Based on this accusation, the prosecutor Córdoba deployed his argument in three days; he confirmed the maneuvers that have the former commercial partner of Cristina Kirchner as the main responsible . When studying the criminal structure, he ratified the gears investigated by the prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan and the judge Sebastián Casanello, which would have materialized between 2010 and 2013 with the participation of more than twenty natural persons and some fifteen legal persons.
The Prosecutor General's Office maintained that the cornerstone of all the operations investigated was Austral Construcciones and considered that businessman K " was the creator, the architect of the network that since Austral branched out to other firms used for the laundering maneuvers . " And he reinforced the concept: "The organization with a transnational deployment led Lázaro Báez, who held the full power of Austral as the laundering organization, had the entire relevant structure with the unconditional collaboration of formal partners, from their managers, their subordinates and even family members. "
This money laundering circuit was linked to the cause of the alleged fraud against the State due to the irregular assignment of public works to Lázaro Báez during the Kirchner government (51 contracts for 46,000 million pesos ). In that case, in charge of TOF 2, Cristina Kirchner and Báez are being tried for illicit association.
Irregularities with these works were considered as a precedent crime of money laundering operations: without this management of funds, businessman K could not have entered the money laundering organization.
JPE