Lucia Salinas
02/28/2021 17:05
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/28/2021 17:05
After Lázaro Báez's sentence to 12 years in prison for laundering, a file focuses on the
businessman's alleged business with Cristina Kirchner and her family.
In the crosshairs, federal judge Sebastián Casanello and prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan have a series of commercial exchanges, purchase and sale of real estate among other transactions that link the Báez and the Kirchners.
The file is 2146/2019 and there the convicted businessman K and the vice president are accused of money laundering.
The files have been advancing at a steady pace and there Marijuan and Casanello seek to determine if the assets for more than 205 million dollars that contractor K acquired are the product of an illicit act and if he acted as a front man for the former presidents.
This week after the harsh sentence against Báez, new documentation was added to the case.
Lázaro Báez still has not recovered from the sentence handed down last Wednesday by the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4), which accused him of having laundered 60 million dollars between 2010 and 2013. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
His four children were also sentenced to different penalties.
This cause, known as the Route of Money K, had among its central axes the determination of how much the assets of Lázaro Báez amounted.
There was a parallel that was investigated: while its flagship firm Austral Construcciones received road tenders from the Kirchner government, part of those funds were turned over to laundering maneuvers.
They included the compulsory purchase of properties and various goods: 1,412 in eight different districts.
Many of these purchase sales of houses, land and commercially concluded businesses were carried out with Austral Construcciones, the cornerstone of the operations investigated in the Money Route.
But at the same time, many of that property acquisition, like the sale of others, was carried out with the Kirchner family.
For this reason, and at the request of the Financial Information Unit (UIF) of the macro-government management,
a new investigation was opened that emerged from the main case
whose oral trial concluded last Wednesday.
The current file
focuses exclusively on businessman K's fortune
.
Only Báez and Cristina Kirchner are charged in the case by decision of the prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan and the operations "for the acquisition of goods in the country through companies of the Báez Group" as well as in a personal capacity are being investigated.
The prosecution asked the Notary Public schools of at least eight provinces
to send all the documentation related to the purchase of properties by Austral Construcciones, the owners of the same and other members of the company.
The documentation began to arrive last week, judicial sources confirmed to
Clarín.
They do not rule out, from the investigation, that Báez's assets are even greater as well as that more ties and cross operations with the Kirchner family appear.
The analysis of the documentation will be in charge of the Asset Recovery area,
dependent on the Procuratorate,
and its purpose is to determine the number of links between Cristina Kirchner and Lázaro Báez with respect to the patrimonial heritage and thus be able to respond to the central proposal of this file:
the origin of the goods acquired and whether the entrepreneur K acted as a "third party"
, that is, as a front man, in this case, of the former President.
The Justice determined that Báez's fortune in assets registered and detected by the prosecution amounts to 205,134,525 dollars, which "were acquired with money diverted from the state coffers through irregular allocation maneuvers of public works, with Lázaro Báez, front man of the Kirchner marriage ", remarked the UIF when requesting the investigation.
To determine the points that gave rise to the case, the prosecutor Marijuan began a survey of all the assets registered in the name of Báez as of his business group.
"It is not ruled out that the fortune exceeds 205 million dollars, and that more properties appear that must be appraised," judicial sources told
Clarín.
That large and millionaire patrimony was confiscated by order of TOF 4 on understanding that Báez laundered 60 million dollars, that he must face a fine of 480 million dollars and also, another corresponding Austral Construcciones for 120 million dollars.
Now the specialized area of the Procuratorate, carries out the crossovers between the links that the businessman K and the vice president have.
For this, information was required from cadastre areas in different places, mainly Santa Cruz, to determine the dates of the operations, who was involved in them, the amounts involved and where the money committed came from.
The assets of Báez are made up of land, houses, apartments, garages, hotels, companies, farms, commercial premises, service stations, warehouses, buildings, airplanes, vehicles and road machinery.
The properties are distributed in ten towns in Santa Cruz, also in the provinces of Chubut, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Tierra del Fuego, Chaco and Santiago del Estero, as well as the Federal Capital.
In addition, 972 vehicles and road machinery belonging to Austral Construcciones were counted.
Look also
Cristina Kirchner's lawyer says that Lázaro Báez was convicted of "press operations"
Lázaro Báez in a state of fury: "Cristina does not learn more"
