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The Anti-Corruption Office will cease to be a plaintiff in two emblematic cases against the Kirchner family

2020-05-14T13:10:55.967Z


These are the causes known as "Hotesur" and "Los sauces", in which Cristina, Máximo and Florencia are prosecuted.


Nicolas Wiñazki

05/14/2020 - 10:01

  • Clarín.com
  • Politics

The Anti-Corruption Office (OA), whose owner is the lawyer and former prosecutor Félix Crous, resolved on Monday, May 11, that this body will cease to be a plaintiff in two of the most relevant oral trials for corruption files K: these are the causes known as "Hotesur" and "Los sauces". 

These are two of the files that are awaiting the start date of their oral hearings, in which the main prosecutors for crimes against the public administration and money laundering are Vice President Cristina Fernández and her two children, Máximo and Florencia Kirchner.

The Hotesur case investigates whether the Kirchner family used state money to benefit their partner and best client in their hotel businesses, Lázaro Báez , who thanks to them won millions of dollars in public works contracts. And while transforming, at the same time, into a generous tenant of the sudden chain of K hotels in the province of Santa Cruz. For years, Baez paid his benefactors exorbitant prices to take advantage of these tourist shops. He lost money paying those contracts, but the Kirchners earned money, allowing them to increase their officially declared family fortune.

In addition, "Hotesur", the company that controls the "Alto Calafate" hotel, guaranteed a fixed occupation thanks to the fact that it was hired by a company nationalized by its owners, Aerolineas Argentinas , so that the crews of the flights of the flag line they slept there every time they flew to El Calafate.

Meanwhile, the oral trial of "Los Sauces" is preparing, with delays, to determine whether the Kirchner family used a real estate agency that gave its name to the court case and that allowed them to rent their multiple properties to only two clients: Báez, contractor of the K State in various areas, and another great winner in the decade won from various markets and concessions regulated by the State, the leader of the "Indalo" holding company, Cristóbal López .

Mechanism similar to those of the "Hotesur" plot, the judicial hypothesis is that thanks to their tenants, one of them their partner and others their friend, the Kirchners managed to "launder" money of illicit origin, invoicing it as very well paid and various incomes. estate. Los Sauces real estate had no employees.

Calafate magic: from the south of the country it is not well known who managed to get Báez and Cristóbal to lease K properties in the Federal Capital.

Clarín agreed to the arguments presented by the OA in Justice to abandon the complaint in the two trials. The agency asked to withdraw the lawsuit in "Hotesur" and "Los Sauces" through two notes from the lawyers who were working on these cases for the public body.

The Alto Calafate hotel owned by the Kirchner family. (Photo: OPI Santa Cruz)

They are short and formal texts. They were elevated to the judges who make up the Oral Court in Federal Criminal No. 5. The same magistrates will judge both cases.

The writings of the OA lawyers in "Hotesur" and "Los Sauces" base the new OA position by means of a unified resolution for both processes. It was signed by the head of this body, Dr. Crous, on Monday, May 11.

The arguments of the decision

According to this documentation, the current management OA considers that the work of the previous management OA in these two corruption schemes should not continue for three reasons.

The first is that "the reference cases are already on trial , going through the supplementary investigation stage ordered by the Oral Court and pending the start of the corresponding oral and public debate, with the exception of case No. 11,904/2014, which is currently in the midst of an investigation stage before the Federal Court in charge of the investigation, with a summons to investigate made by the intervening Prosecutor. "

The second argument ensures that thanks to the complaint of the OA previous management in these trials, the momentum of the criminal action is guaranteed "by the intervention of the Financial Information Unit (UIF), the governing body in the area of ​​money laundering, acting as a state prosecutor, as well as by the Public Prosecutor's Office itself, holder of the public criminal action representing the general interest of society. "

The third argument is the most novel. Crous affirms that the OA lacks hierarchical employees to work in these two processes and that it must use the scarce human resources of its organism to file complaints in cases that it describes as "more complex", for which they demand a "particular expertise in crimes of public corruption. " The head of the OA later adds that these cases, moreover, are "more topical".

Félix Crous, the owner of the OA designated by Alberto Fernández.

What cases are you referring to and why do you think that "limited" human resources should be concentrated on these other causes? How is it possible that a judicial case is "more topical" than an oral and public trial that does not have a date yet? No start date for both processes, something generated, among other variables, by legal tricks adjusted to law, raised by the defenders of the Kirchners.

An undated trial, suspended for whatever reason, but always for the procedural benefit of its accused, can never be "more topical" than an ongoing investigation.

The departure of the OA as a plaintiff in these two oral trials is a concrete indication of the position that the ruling party will have in the face of the challenge of independence that it must face in the face of the development of judicial cases in which corruption is investigated by one of its senior authorities. , the Vice President of the Nation.

In practice, with this decision, the OA creates a vacuum that helps the defense of the main accused of corruption, which is, at the same time, the second in the line of presidential succession.

Criticism, amazement and new judicial accusations

The spectacular turn of the OA in these two trials, emblematic of the possible corruption K, generated astonishment and will provoke new judicial accusations against the Peronist government on the part of the complainant of the two cases, the former deputy Margarita Stolbizer. And also of who was his main assistant in the impulse of the investigations, the lawyer Silvina Martínez .

In dialogue with Clarín , Stolbizer described the actions of the new OA as a consequence of what he denounced are "Fernández's (Cristina) pacts with Fernández (Alberto, the President). The Executive Power, with its desertion in these trials, it becomes an accomplice to attempts to generate impunity from power, "said Stolbizer.

In addition, he announced that this decision of the OA provokes a new scenario: "Now, more than ever, the ball is on the side of the Judiciary . They are the ones who must maintain that in Argentina Justice exists and the Rule of Law is in force."

For the former legislator, Crous's resolution is "coarse, rigged and prong . The OA washes its hands, withdraws, and leaves the corrupt free."

Lawyer Martínez, meanwhile, agreed in the same sense when asked about the OA's withdrawal from the "Hotesur" and "Los Sauces" complaints, but added information that, according to her, is not suspected but product of a deliberate plan: "From the court the interveners of the companies of the Kirchners are removed on suspicion. We removed the complainants as amicus curiae from the court. And the cases are asleep. All this closes with the resignation of the OA to continue with the complaint . "

Martínez announced that he will file a complaint against Félix Crous for withdrawing from the complaints that "acted well, in this case, during the administration of Mauricio Macri."

The current government reformed the rules that governed the OA. He transformed it into a "deconcentrated" (sic) organism of the Presidency of the Nation.

The Los Sauces hotel, owned by the Kirchner family in Calafate. (Photo: OPI Santa Cruz)

The changes included details on how an OA chief should act: "He shall enjoy technical independence and carry out the functions that correspond to him without receiving instructions from the President of the Nation or from any other superior authority of the National Executive Power."

The members of the Federal Oral Court 5 surprised Crous's decision to stop being a plaintiff in the cases against the Kirchner family, Clarín learned from sources who know the back room of the case.

It happens that the OA had promoted, during the administration of Laura Alonso, the two files through an infinity of writings, always in the role of plaintiff. Now the OA contradicts itself with the OA.

Which of the two OAs (Crous management, Alonso management) performed well in "Hotesur" and "Los Sauces"?

The suspicions were installed by the complainants: Could the Vice President of the Nation, or perhaps someone who said that she spoke on behalf of her, have influenced this "deconcentrated" body to benefit her from a procedural point of view?

The current OA management took around five months to detect that its actions could be replaced by another control body after years of dedicating human energy and public funds to two causes of corruption that were not disqualified by Dr. Crous.

This sudden action by the OA to change its role in two such sensitive trials, could it be due to delays typical of bureaucracies and new government criteria on how to work in suspected cases of corruption? According to the actions of the OA so far, that was not what the OA happened.

JPE

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2020-05-14

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