Lucia Salinas
03/03/2021 18:11
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 03/03/2021 18:11
The house has three bedrooms, a spacious living room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, a park with a swimming pool.
He maintains that he likes the place, that he is comfortable there, although he misses the south.
He has an electronic ankle brace in place
and despite not being in jail, he still feels like a prisoner.
He is, but for now despite having been sentenced to twelve years for money laundering, he will not return to the prison where he spent more than four and a half years.
Lázaro Báez has a latent concern: the emotional situation of his son Martín, detained in Ezeiza two years ago, and the sentence that falls on all his heirs.
He ordered the defenses to work together, "he no longer cares about the number of years he has to face facing legal proceedings,
now he wants to save his children
."
Silence was his strategy, and for now, it will remain so.
For some time now, Lázaro Báez has been accompanied by his girlfriend while serving house arrest.
On a borrowed property in Greater Buenos Aires, he remains.
It is another kind of prison, but he is no longer inside a penitentiary unlike the eldest of his sons, Martín.
With a sentence of twelve years in prison, for having laundered 60 million dollars, he remains who knew how to be Cristina Kirchner's business partner for more than a decade.
They were united, the justice determined 28 commercial ties.
"Cristina does not learn more," Báez often reiterates.
His proposal has a second part: "He did not learn from Nestor how to resolve things in politics."
These days, confined in that home on loan, despite having acquired 1,412 assets in eight different provinces, his proposals regarding the vice president are not far from something already sustained.
"She never loved me", and her son Leandro, the only one in the family determined to speak, expands the concept: "It is clear that they let go of his hand, they
exchanged little figures and left him as an emblem of corruption and they forgot the officials,
"he told
Clarín.
Lázaro Báez remains calm, he is stoic of character, the conviction for money laundering did not break him.
He expected the accusation, but admits to his inner circle that he was surprised by the maximum sentence awarded.
However, her weak point is her children.
After reading the sentence by the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4), businessman K communicated by phone with the eldest of his sons, Martín, who has been imprisoned in Ezeiza for two years.
They sentenced him to nine years in prison.
Her biggest concern is her child, her emotional state.
When he said his final words before TOF 4, Martín Báez said that his life was shattered, spoke of a social condemnation and again asked to be acquitted.
The latter did not happen, on the contrary, they gave him
the second highest penalty for money laundering.
Always more dependent on the decisions of his father, more cautious to speak, Martín Báez is Lázaro's greatest concern.
He is still in prison, and everything indicates that he will remain in that state for much longer.
Telephone calls from the house where he is under house arrest to the prison where he was for four and a half years are daily.
She seeks to accompany her son Martín, who had his birthday on February 9, two days before businessman K.
On his 65th birthday, Báez received a surprise:
he visited him after two years without seeing each other, his son Leandro
.
His two sons accompanied him. He did not know the youngest Lazaro personally.
That moment broke into his stoic character.
And from his most intimate environment they assure that since he was detained in April 2016, something has changed in him regarding his family, "he is more connected and pending," they explained.
However, silence continues to be their strategy and choice in court cases.
The youngest of his four children, asked him on several occasions to speak, to "explain the role of all of us in the company and who were those who handled the money that was abroad, because we were beneficiaries of the accounts but we never saw a peso" he said to
Clarín.
In privacy, his proposal is only one: save his children.
One is in prison, Leandro has a sentence of five years and Luciana and Melina Báez were sentenced to three years in suspension.
"Work together, you have to get them out any way," he outlined during these days before his lawyers.
With the sentence already passed, businessman K advanced on something that did not happen during the eight years of investigation of the case: that the whole family have the same judicial strategy, they had a total of a dozen lawyers.
Desperation prevailed, and
now they are thinking of drafting an appeal of similar terms to achieve a reduction in the charges for the two boys and an acquittal for their daughters.
With this latent concern, Lázaro made a specific request to his son Leandro:
“Visit Martín and get closer to your sisters”
, more specifically to the oldest of them, Luciana.
The differences within the Báez clan were exposed throughout the judicial process, the differences with history deepened among some of its members and now, with his entire family accused, Lázaro seeks the unity of all.
He had already required his four children to remain calm prior to the reading of the sentence, a week ago.
Now, he fights for the unity of his heirs, all convicted of money laundering.
As they reveal from a nearby environment, their analysis does not differ much from that outlined by Leandro these days:
Cristina Kirchner must be concerned because there was talk of a preceding crime, which is the case of alleged corruption in public works.
During these weeks, in his quest to iron out rough spots in his family, Báez again communicated with Norma Calismonte, his ex-wife but the only one who faithfully visited him for four years while he remained in the Ezeiza Prison.
She was responsible for caring for businessman K's mother until her death, and from the closest environment they attribute an even higher role to her: that of containing all her children who paraded through the courts of Comodoro Py.
He also asked his youngest son to accompany his mother as much as possible.
The condemnation hit them all, it is indisputable.
The idea of going back to Santa Cruz is far away.
He misses his province by adoption, where he arrived from Corrientes when he was only five years old, and where he knew how to build a large and millionaire empire.
He no longer asks about companies or properties.
He maintained these days that he likes the house where he is under house arrest.
He got some reassurance.
The days go by with a certain monotony: he reads the judicial files and is mainly focused, in the case of public works where he shares a trial with Cristina Kirchner.
But he goes through other readings: politics, history predominantly, and the telephone is his way of communicating more assiduously with his family.
"He still has a friend left," Leandro said wryly.
He longs to be reunited with his four children.
It has been a long time since he has been able to do so, due to the distances, because of the family inmates who signed his most intimate nucleus during these years, and now one of them is in prison.
He assures that they are alone, without the accompaniment of politics that knew how to be a great umbrella for him, and reiterates from time to time, that they let go of his hand, that Cristina Kirchner, his former business partner, forgot about him,
“They just leave the Cristinistas are in jail
,
”he
said with a laugh but with indisputable annoyance, on one occasion when he was still in the Ezeiza Prison.
That link of millionaire figures is part of the past, but for justice it cannot be omitted if one seeks to explain the fortune of Lázaro, the empire of 1,412 assets and how he became a construction businessman since 2003. For him, it is part of a stage completed.