Nicolas Wiñazki
02/28/2021 8:04 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/28/2021 8:04 AM
The main business partner of the Kirchner family, Lázaro Báez, is convinced that Vice President Cristina Fernández is
responsible for a good part of their judicial misfortunes
.
After just over two years of the oral and public trial of the case known as
"The Route of Money K",
for which he is imprisoned under the modality of house arrest, the Federal Oral Court 4 sentenced him to twelve years in prison for committing the crime of aggravated money laundering.
It was to be expected for him
.
But he hoped that his four children, also prosecuted in the same case, would not be included as protagonists of this corruption plot.
Worst case scenario: they received sentences ranging from 9 years in prison to 3 years of suspended service.
Báez is a man who does not usually express his true feelings if he is not in front of his beloved people, his most intimate ones.
But last Wednesday he became
a volcano of rage,
sources who have been treating him for decades
assured
Clarín
.
And he
focused his anger on his long-time partner, Vice President Cristina Fernández,
whom he accuses of not helping him in his prison decline: "This, with my friend Nestor, would never have happened. She (for Cristina) does not learn more.
She was not supportive, she did not defend us as she did with other prisoners,
"she said in front of several of her interlocutors after being surprised by the sentences against her children.
Báez was perhaps
Nestor Kirchner's best friend.
But once the former president died, the commercial relationship with his family suffered until he ended up in prison, something that he endured in silence despite the fact that he let it transpire several times that he was analyzing declaring as repentant before his judicial investigators.
The current situation overwhelmed him.
His eldest son
Martin
is detained in the Federal Penitentiary Complex I, Ezeiza.
In "The Route of Money K" he was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
For his other son
Leandro,
the sentence was five years (when his father started his business with the K's, he was in high school).
His daughters
Melina and Luciana
were sentenced to three years in suspense.
Báez for now remains silent and did not make statements after being found guilty of having laundered
55 million dollars
of illicit origin during the K presidencies. The arguments of the sentences of the judges of the Court that proved his crimes are not yet known.
But it turned out that a majority of them consider that
the preceding crime
with which the Báez obtained the money that they later removed from the legal system to accounts in different countries through a scheme of companies based in tax havens was generated by those negotiated with the work public
granted by the Kirchners
.
It is a judicial coup against the vice president
.
She is being tried as the leader of an illicit association that used the state to benefit Báez's construction companies with state infrastructure contracts that were allegedly paid with premiums and despite irregularities committed by those companies.
Báez is furious with Fernández (Cristina), and Fernández (Cristina) went into a state of anger and attack
to retake the initiative against the Judicial Power, which he considers will harm her in her multiple corruption trials (see separate note).
After years of broken ties and indifference despite imprisonment for Báez, the businessman at sunset and his partner
are now hostages of themselves,
invaded by the anger of one against the other.
This fight could have unforeseen consequences.
A new path of accusations by at least one of the Baez against the vice president occurred last Friday.
In an interview with the
LN +
channel
,
Leandro Báez, the youngest of Lázaro's children, was encouraged to say what a large part of his family thinks, and perhaps what his father is silent:
"With our conviction, Justice sent him a very clear message to the government. "
At that point that day, only one of the vice's trusted leaders, Senator
Oscar Parrilli,
had been the only one who tried to defend the former businessman in public.
It was with little legal arguments:
"Do you know why they condemn Lázaro Báez? Because he is dark, because he has a dark complexion, because he is a friend of Néstor Kirchner and because he is not part of the courtroom of businessmen friends of power, many of them related to the media. "
The youngest of the Báez used that sudden defense of a "Cristinista" leader to delve into a disturbing thesis:
"Rare that now they come out to defend Lázaro,"
he complained.
And he hit where it hurts the Kirchners:
if the Báez were convicted of earning illicit money with public works, as determined by Justice, then in that logic the vice herself, formerly President, could see her procedural situation even more complicated: " she is condemning without knowing the preceding crime and she is in that preceding crime (by Cristina Kirchner). And now they go out to bank Lázaro. "
The message, whether or not it was premeditated, seems to have generated consequences for Fernández (Cristina).
Yesterday, his personal lawyer,
Alberto Beraldi,
defended Lázaro Báez after his convictions as if he were suddenly his own client.
That defense is an almost direct defense on the part of the vice president, who never got along with Baez.
Said Beraldi, at the same time
adviser on judicial issues of the Casa Rosada
: "What happened to Lázaro Báez was the result of the press operations that were carried out with the magistrates who had to intervene, that seemed unfortunate to me and regarding the verdict, it is a shame high and excessive ”.
Fernández's lawyer (Cristina), a surprising public defender of Báez, added: "" I was surprised by how harsh the penalties were in the Lázaro Báez case.
And I think the pressures that were put on the judges had an effect.
Media reference is made to the fact that it is the public work of Santa Cruz ".
According to what he learned from sources who speak with Lázaro Báez every week, the former public contractor and partner in several businesses of the Kirchners went into a fury because for years his lawyers had convinced him that
the Kirchners would help him to face his problems with the Judicial Power .
But none of that happened.
Báez cannot get out of his head that a possible judicial operator of the Kirchners who could have harmed him is the former Legal and Technical Secretary,
Carlos Zannini
, the vice legal ideologist and before her husband, who today holds the position of Attorney General of the Treasure.
The prisoner Báez reveals that Zannini always had a greater affinity with one of the construction companies that were his competition in the business world K:
Electroingenieria, led by Gerardo Ferreya.
Leandro Báez's statements struck the heart of the Kirchner family.
A skilled witness,
he implied that his father had many things to say
: "Lazaro is not going to speak. He is taking charge as I said in the statement. I never expected him to tell anything. Lazaro is like that, he's a tough guy."
Báez Jr. insists with a request to his father that turns into a war of nerves read by the Kirchners
: "I would like him to clarify his situation."
Did Vice President Cristina Fernández react through her defense attorney to help her disgraced partner, albeit with a long delay?
Or did Beraldi really speak to protect only his client against the possible complication that could be generated in his trial for public works that in the conviction of Báez it was ruled that the origin of the millions of dollars he laundered came from state infrastructure contracts who was earning illegally?
In the trial that has the current vice as the main defendant for the public works contracts that Báez won in an almost monopolistic and irregular way, she does not receive good news.
The last witnesses to complicate it were the members of a commission with financial objectives that was part of Vialidad Nacional, the official entity that paid public works to state contractors.
As they declared before the Federal Oral Court 2, the construction companies of Báez had
a unique economic benefit during K management
in that body.
Despite the fact that they delivered certificates of public works that had to be paid months later, the order they received from their bosses, unequivocal and persistent, was that Lázaro's companies were always paid, but always, in advance.
In this process, many other witnesses and documentation in this regard complicate the procedural situation of the vice, although there is more than a year before the trial ends.
Lázaro is angry. Cristina too.
The heyday they lived in other times, today infuriates them.
She is in power.
The prisoner.
"My friend was Nestor. She was always the same. Nothing can be expected," laments Báez in his house arrest.
The possible jail time for his children could change his silent stint in his personal hell.
