Lucia Salinas
03/28/2021 17:05
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 03/28/2021 17:05
In addition to the crucial validation of the testimonies of those repentant in that case by the Federal Chamber of Cassation, in recent months the convictions of Julio De Vido and Lázaro Báez, and the very probable and imminent ratification of the sentence for illicit enrichment Against José López they support the central accusation of the Cuadernos de las Bribes file: that
in the K governments there was an illicit association
to turn the Federal Planning Ministry into a virtual
"bribery office" on a large scale and over time.
Cristina Kirchner did not skimp on criticism of justice in her last virtual step by Comodoro Py.
It maintains that the eight causes that it has brought to oral trial for corruption, only respond to
lawfare
:
a political persecution to discredit it.
His explanation goes further, and from that argument he questioned the functioning of the jurisdiction that investigates different crimes related to the conduct of public officials, both in the exercise of the function and outside it.
In recent months, the federal Justice issued several sentences and confirmed others, for
acts of corruption and money laundering in different files
, in which the same thesis is reiterated:
an alleged structure to collect bribes
that operated from the defunct Ministry of Planning Federal, who directed Julio De Vido for twelve years.
In the midst of the government's confrontation with the Judiciary, the Chamber of Cassation confirmed the conviction against Julio De Vido for fraudulent administration in the Tragedy of Once, the confirmation of the accusations in one of the Odebrecht cases where a bribery route is being investigated applied to two water treatment plants of AySA.
Old colleagues.
José López and Julio De Vido in the 90s, when they were employees of Néstor Kirchner in Santa Cruz.
On the other hand, in February Lázaro Báez was sentenced a month ago for money laundering in the Route of Money K with
twelve years in prison
: the trial analyzed the maneuvers of the former partner of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner to launder at least 55 million of Dollars from
public works contracts
that, according to another case, were agreed with
surcharges
and in many cases were not even completed.
An episode absolutely consistent with the indictment in the Cuadernos case.
On April 14 there will be a hearing in the Cassation Chamber, after which its judges will have twenty days to analyze the conviction against José López, former secretary of Public Works, accused of
illicit enrichment
for those
bags with nine million dollars that he sought to hide in the
General Rodríguez
convent
in June 2016. The illicit money of López - who is also accused by the Cuadernos - would have come from bribes that were managed from different Planning offices.
Another former secretary of that portfolio,
Ricardo Jaime
, has a request for elevation to trial in another corruption case and has
already admitted the collection of bribes
when he sought an abbreviated trial.
Those cases linked to Odebrecht, both the Aysa case and the file on the expansion of the NOA-NEA gas pipelines, are investigating a bribery circuit for which De Vido, Roberto Baratta, López and the former Secretary of Energy
Daniel Cameron
are already prosecuted
, among others.
All members of the Ministry of Planning.
Some of those same former officials also have cases brought to trial for diversion of funds that the Ministry of Planning had to go to
the Río Turbio coal mine
, plagued by complaints of overpricing for works to be carried out.
In all cases, they are individual files, but that -as the justice said- demonstrate a "corruption matrix established by the Federal Planning Ministry that operated from 2003 to 2015."
This text is part of the imputation in the case of the Cuadernos de las Coimas.
"They seem to be all maneuvers at different times during that period, which in turn
are parts of a great criminal maneuver
," explained a judicial source close to the Cuadernos case.
Cristina Kirchner, flanked by her Minister of Federal Planning, Julio de Vido and the Secretary of Public Works, José López in a ceremony, in 2010. Photo Télam.
Thus, while the Justice continues to resolve cases that closely touch the vice president, such as the confirmation by the Supreme Court of Justice of the sentence against Amado Boudou in the Ciccone case, in Comodoro Py other judicial procedures continue to feed the hypothesis of the Cuadernos case.
The late Judge
Claudio Bonadio
, described the file as "the main criminal organization" of the last decades, dedicated to the "collection of illegal funds" that in some cases were overturned "to money laundering operations in the country and abroad. ”.
Last year, the Chamber of Cassation endorsed the Repentant Law and thus the 31 testimonies that the Cuadernos file has, whose main accusation became the skeleton of six more files, in which it was sought to analyze area by area in the that the Ministry of Planning awarded contracts.
Thus, cases were opened for bribes in the
importation of liquefied gas, in the concession of tolls, the granting of subsidies to bus and train companies
, the cartelization of public works and money laundering operations abroad attributed to the Kirchner's former private secretary,
Daniel Muñoz.
In all these areas "
failures have been confirmed
in other instances that feed that scheme that worked from Federal Planning," said another source working on the case already raised for oral debate.
The investigations related to Cuadernos are related to the main body of the case, in which the vice president is prosecuted as head of the illicit association.
That accusation was replicated in the derivations of the case, but the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber halved the prosecutions against Cristina for not finding her directly related.
She only had the imputation in the "mother cause", in the section that investigated the cartelization of public works and in which it focused on the subsidies to the train service.
The orders for preventive detention ran the same fate: they were all revoked.
