Lucia Salinas
02/14/2020 - 15:11
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The Federal Oral Court 5 (TOF 5) is analyzing the offer of evidence of the Hotesur case (hotel firm of the Kirchner family) of the parties involved. In addition to the one hundred witnesses offered by the public prosecutor Diego Velasco, it is also studied whether there is an expertise that Cristina Kirchner required in coincidence with Lázaro Báez , asking that all the contracts concluded by the company be analyzed. In this case they were accused of having washed 80 million pesos through the companies of the Báez Group and the hotels of the former President.
Once the instruction is finished, the complementary investigation - prior to the oral trial - of the Hotesur case is progressing along with that of the Los Sauces case, the Kirchner family's real estate agency who is also accused of money laundering. Justice determined that the two companies of Cristina, Máximo and Florencia Kirchner were used for laundering operations , with a common denominator: the companies of Lázaro Báez.
Offering evidence is a step before the final date for the start of the trial. The prosecutor gives the Court the facts that he considers should be evaluated during the hearings. Among those tests, the prosecutor also presented a list of one hundred witnesses to be able to give their testimony when the oral and public trial is conducted.
In this instance, the parties also require various measures, which the judges will evaluate if they are necessary for the development of the trial. Cristina Kirchner requested that a skill be carried out in which all the contracts between Hotesur and the Báez Group are analyzed.
Lázaro Báez asked for something similar: a skill that analyzes the commercial agreements concluded between 2008 and 2013 with the hotel company of the Kirchners.
If the court composed of Judges Daniel Obligado, José Martínez Sobrino and Adriana Palliotii, accepted the requests, the beginning of the trial could be delayed several months. And there are reasons to believe that he will do it: in the case Los Sauces - that by the coincidence of defendants and the crimes investigated will be judged with Hotesur - an expertise also required by Lázaro Báez was ordered. The measure is in full development.
The hypothesis that prosecutors Gerardo Pollicita and Ignacio Mahiques investigated during the investigation is that the former presidents and their children received money from Báez “through the hotel business under a certain legitimacy appearance”, which assured them that they could declare those funds before the Anti-Corruption Office and before the Treasury "hiding its true origin" allegedly illicit. In addition to the Kirchner family and the businessman, Romina Mercado (daughter of Alicia Kirchner) and Osvaldo Sanfelice , among other defendants, will also be tried .
Judge Julián Ercolini "considered the maneuver by which the criminal association under investigation channeled a portion of what was stolen from the National State - through the road public works - to the former presidents and their family nucleus through a money laundering scheme based on the hotel activity that those carried out through the company "Hotesur.
According to the instruction, for the Kirchner family to acquire the hotels between 2005 and 2009, there were more than 15 buying and selling of land and property between Báez and the former presidents. This liquidity allowed them - with the participation of Máximo Kirchner - to buy the Las Dunas hotel for 700,000 dollars and Alto Calafate, for 4,900,000 dollars.
As a next step, the firm Valle Miter, of Báez, was created in order to manage the hotels, "to receive that money and apply it to the hotel business, and thus allow the illicit gain to be distanced from its true origin."
It all ended with the entry of funds to equity K. Between 2009 and July 2013, Báez guaranteed the Kirchners 27,592,110 pesos for rentals to Hotesur. The figure is important, but more the proportion that it saves in the total income of the family business. 54% of Alto Calafate's income came from the Austral Group.
Unified judgment
In these two cases, family businesses were investigated. On the one hand, in Hotesur -firma dedicated to the hotel industry- the businesses were analyzed with Lázaro Báez, responsible for managing three hotels of the Kirchner family. In the case of Los Sauces, an asset laundering structure was proposed through the simulation of property rentals managed by that family real estate.
With months of difference these files represented the prosecution for money laundering for Cristina Kirchner and her children who were fulfilling, according to Justice, important roles in the firms. The cases were raised to oral trial and were held together in a single Court.
Both investigations have shared evidence and practically the same list of defendants: of the 19 accused in Hotesur, 12 are also in the case of Los Sauces. The crime would have been committed with the same modus operandi: the governments of Cristina and Nestor Kirchner benefited K entrepreneurs with public businesses and these allegedly made improper returns and millionaires through rental housing (Los Sauces) or hiring hotel rooms (Hotesur).
