Lucia Salinas
05/29/2020 - 15:09
- Clarín.com
- Politics
In response to the request of the prosecutor Diego Velasco, the Oral Federal Court 5 (TOF 5) authorized the judicial fair to be able to "advance in the Los Sauces and Hotesur cases and to initiate the requested expertise". Cristina, Máximo and Florencia Kirchner are investigated for money laundering in this trial. In view of this trial, the Anti-Corruption Office (OA) resigned his complaint ten days ago.
For two months, the Hotesur and Los Sauces causes had no movement. Without the OA as a plaintiff in these two cases where the Kirchner family businesses were investigated, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office asked that the work be resumed to "advance towards the oral trial" against the vice president, her children, Lázaro Báez, Cristóbal López, among others.
Given the extension of the extraordinary fair in the context of the Covid19 emergency, the TOF 5 decided to make room for Velasco's request and enabled the fair to advance in these cases "with the limitations that the health issue imposes on us all".
With the beginning of the quarantine ordered by Alberto Fernández, Justice remains in an extraordinary fair, and some stages prior to setting a date for the start of the trial were without progress. As Clarín said , the TOF 5 gave rise to a request from Cristina Kirchner and Lázaro Báez, for Hotesur to carry out an accounting expertise on the contracts signed by that firm that owns the Alto Calafate hotel. A similar measure had already been initiated in Los Sauces, analyzing all the location contracts.
Without the specialists' conclusions, the TOF 5 will not set a date to start the hearings . That is why the prosecutor Velasco required that the judicial beast be enabled to proceed with the case.
In the document presented before the Court, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office remarked that it is necessary to resume the activity to "make the supplementary instruction, to continue with the expertise of Los Sauces and to begin with that of Hotesur, to digitize all the cause and documentation thereof. "
For the experts it is essential to have all the evidence collected in the file , but since they could not meet or have access to the documentation found in the containers located outside Comodoro Py and part in a room of the Libertad Building, they were asked to Everything is transferred to digital format "so that the experts can work," judicial sources explained to Clarín .
In this sense, it was suggested that the experts "meet virtually to make the reports and that the expertise not remain stagnant", and thus finish the work required. TOF 5 ordered that the experts who had not accepted take over and gave instructions on how to advance in this task, releasing trades to different organizations to have all the information.
On the other hand, the prosecutor had warned that it is necessary to enable the fair to "require all the reports that are needed to advance the expertise, be they accounting records of the companies, requests for reports from different organizations and all kinds of documentation that they are necessary to move towards oral judgment. "
In one of the final paragraphs of the request before the TOF 5, Velasco had argued: "That everything be done that can be done with the supplementary instruction to advance and reach the trial as quickly as possible , " which will have 160 witnesses, as accepted by the Court presided over by judge Daniel Obligado, the same one that granted Amado Boudou house arrest in the midst of the Covid pandemic19.
In these files that will have a unified trial, the crime that would have been committed, according to the accusation, had the same modus operandi: "the governments of Cristina and Néstor Kirchner benefited K entrepreneurs with public businesses and these allegedly made improper returns and millionaires through home rentals (Los Sauces) or the hiring of hotel rooms (Hotesur), "prosecutors said during the investigation.
Los Sauces and Hotesur, dedicated to the location of real estate -in the second case exclusively of hotels- were investigated for the contracts signed essentially with the businessmen K Lázaro Báez and Cristóbal López. In the case of the real estate company, operations were estimated at over 30 million pesos, and with the hotel company, justice believes that some 80 million pesos were laundered.
Likewise, these two files were linked to fraud in public works in favor of Lázaro Báez. The Buenosairean federal Chamber indicated that corruption in said file is the precedent crime of the investigations for money laundering, that is, that a portion of the money that businessman K received from the State, was derived from the rents of the companies of the Kirchners and finally, to the heritage of the former presidents.
