Lucia Salinas
08/12/2020 - 17:30
- Clarín.com
- Politics
This Thursday, remotely, the Federal Oral Court 3 (TOF 3) will resume the oral trial against Cristóbal López, Fabián De Sousa and Ricardo Echegaray for the alleged fraud against the State due to the lack of payment of the Fuel Transfer Tax ( ITC), with the firm Oil Combustibles, having generated a multimillion dollar debt with the treasury. The oral debate, which will resume at 2:30 p.m., will be attended by two defense lawyers who make up the Advisory Committee for the expansion of the Supreme Court, León Arslanian -a lawyer of the former head of the Treasury-, and Carlos Beraldi , defender of De Sousa.
The trial began on June 13, 2019, and was interrupted by the extraordinary judicial fair because of the coronavirus. Cristóbal López and Fabián De Sousa (owners of the Indalo Group) and Ricardo Echegaray (former head of the AFIP), in the case where they were prosecuted for an alleged fraud of 8,000 million pesos.
After the investigation stage concluded, in the trial carried out by TOF 3 - chaired by Judge Andrés Basso and made up of his peers Fernando Machado Pelloni and Javier Ríos - the testimonial statements began. The parties agreed to listen to about fifty people, of whom about twenty have already passed through the podium.
This Thursday the hearings resume with the testimonial statement of two accountants from the Indalo Group. The TOF 3 has already informed the witnesses who are declaring to say in advance what documentation they are going to cite, so that it can be digitized and provided to the parties.
Cristóbal López, Ricardo Echegaray and Fabián De Sousa, together with their lawyers Carlos Beraldi and León Arslanian, on a day of the trial. Photo Luciano Thieberger.
The particularity of the resumption of the trial is that the Court will face two lawyers appointed by the Government in the advisory commission on the operation of the Supreme Court: León Arslanian -echegaray's historical lawyer- and Carlos Beraldi , who is not only a lawyer Cristina Kirchner, but represents Fabián De Sousa in this trial and continues to be a lawyer for the Indalo Group.
When the TOF 3 asked the parties if they agreed to restart the oral and public trial virtually, the first to respond was Cristóbal López. He agreed to resume the trial, but with some conditions. Among them, that "possible measures should be arbitrated in order to guarantee publicity, orality and immediacy, as well as extreme precautions so that the right to defense of the accused can be adequately exercised." TOF 3 responded that advertising "is guaranteed."
The trial
According to the indictment of the case, “the corruption maneuver was corroborated by which, from the AFIP, the officials in charge of administering the revenues of the Nation, headed by the head of the organization Ricardo Echegaray, defrauded through the ITC in a systematic, deliberate way and permanent to the National State , for the benefit of the businessmen Cristóbal López and Fabián De Sousa, causing damage to the public administration in excess of 8 billion pesos. "
The court determined that the payment facility plans granted by the AFIP to businessman K allowed him not to pay the mentioned tax so that they could "use it improperly and for their own benefit." That money, according to the Justice, was used to capitalize the other companies of the Indalo group . "This, to the detriment of the coffers of the State that stopped receiving the sum of 5,144,538,391.07 pesos as capital."
There were three clear moments in the case: the first of them in 2010, when Oil Combustibles was established, which it considers a “corporate structure for fraud”. Later, the ITC's instance of “illegitimate debt accumulation” began. It was argued that, with the “irregular granting of payment facility plans,” López “improperly used the tax” to finance and expand Grupo Indalo.
Cristóbal López, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner at the inauguration of the Casino de Río Gallegos in 2003.
The amount of the debt
The TOF 3 ordered an expert report that exposes the movement of funds from Oil Combustibles, with its bankruptcy process started in July 2018. On page 45 of the report, it is detailed that as of December 10, 2015 “the debt by the ITC of Oil amounted to 6,240,663,823 pesos. This figure does not include interest . This aspect is taken up in the expertise in point eight, “Summary of balances as of 12/10/2015”, where it was requested that the unpaid accrued debts be detailed, yielding the same figure, that is, more than 6,200 million pesos.
When the expertise refers to the debts, it speaks of those "not enforceable" for the most part: this is because they are debts entered into payment plans granted by the agency. This is precisely what is being investigated in the trial: the reasons why those plans were granted and the role of the AFIP when demanding the payment of the tribute.
This debt has been accounted for since 2011, while the lawsuit focuses on the period from May 2013 to August 2015. In that period, the accumulated debt was 4,200 million pesos, and the interest calculated (point 12 of the expertise) Based on that unpaid figure, they amount to just over 6 billion, according to the report's annex.
For this reason, the AFIP of the previous management claimed through the civil lawsuit -which is part of the trial- more than 10,000 million pesos from businessman K, in respect of the unpaid ITC. Given this figure, the defense of López and De Sousa maintains that as of December 2015 they only owed 600 million pesos. This figure corresponds to the two payment facility plans granted by Article 32, a power of the Treasury Administrator. However, "it does not include the other plans that are the subject of the investigation," they explained.