Lucia Salinas
08/19/2020 - 17:19
- Clarín.com
- Politics
By order of Chamber IV of the Cassation Chamber, the Court that is trying Lázaro Báez for money laundering reduced his bail and now he must pay $ 386,578,000 to leave the Ezeiza prison, where he has been for almost four and a half years. The proposal was reformulated after the defense of businessman K maintained that he could not pay $ 632.5 million as had been established by the judges of the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4) as a condition for his release to be effective. They also refused to grant him house arrest.
To request the reduction, the chambermaids took into account that in two laundering cases related to La Ruta del Dinero K, Báez has a firm release from prison and also a firm house arrest - since March of this year - "which was granted to the accused for health reasons and for the long time he has been detained in preventive detention - 4 years and 4 months in preventive detention ".
The discussion between the two judicial instances began on July 8, when Chamber IV of the Cassation Chamber ordered TOF 4, which is finishing the trial of Lázaro Báez for laundering in La Ruta del Dinero K, to release the contractor under the criteria established by the prosecutor for the trial, Abel Córdoba, who had recommended a release on bail of 5 million dollars and the placement of an anklet.
But then, the judges of the Court set a bond of 632.5 million pesos for him to leave jail. This resulted in a new defense claim, which said that the assets of businessman K - valued at US $ 205 million - was seized and did not have funds to face the surety.
The prosecutor recalculated it and reduced it to $ 386 million, which is the figure that the Chamber of Cassation ordered the TOF 4 that I said as surety. In a new resolution, to which Clarín agreed , the judges stated that they did not share the criteria of the Cassation that had held that the oral court "exceeded what was requested by the prosecutors", when deciding not to modify the real surety.
For the highest criminal court, since none of the accusers - neither the Public Prosecutor's Office nor the complaint - "expressed their interest in having the accused remain in preventive detention in prison," TOF 4 should refer to the prosecutor's proposals, such as orders article 210 of the Federal Criminal Procedure Code.
"We must point out that we do not share those concepts that refer to the binding nature of the tax opinion, because we understand that this does not follow from the norms that regulate the criminal process under which we are governed," replied the Court that is trying Báez.
Another point of disagreement was the criteria of the Cassation, which considered that the surety "was arbitrary." For this they took into account that the Prosecutor had requested that Lázaro Báez be imposed the payment of 386,578,500 pesos, equivalent to 5.5 million dollars, according to the official price of the Central Bank dollar, "almost half of what was imposed by the court who made use of the quotation of the Electronic Payment Market (MEP) - known as the stock dollar ", states the resolution.
Once again, the TOF 4 responded to this point: "regarding the amount of the established surety, it should be remembered that we have expressly analyzed on July 17, that in the current economic life of our country there is no single conversion of the peso Argentine currency in relation to the US currency and, as an example, we mention the official dollar, retail dollar, Banco Nación dollar, BCRA dollar, wholesale or exchange dollar, financial dollar, MEP dollar or Stock market dollar, tourist dollar or card, among others".
On the other hand, the chambermaids had asked for the house arrest that in one of the cases had been granted to Báez in the framework of the Covid19 health emergency. TOF 4 indicated that it already decided to reject this request on August 4.
"In accordance with what is required by the Attorney General's Office, the rejection of the effectiveness of the easing of the detention conditions of the named Báez has been ordered and the Federal Penitentiary Complex I of Ezeiza was requested to join forces with the efforts to continue with strict health control ", about businessman K.
