Lucia Salinas
04/26/2021 18:40
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/26/2021 6:40 PM
More than 3,000 pages contained the grounds on which the judges of the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4) sentenced Lázaro Báez to twelve years in prison for the crime of money laundering. Cristina Kirchner's former business partner was charged along with his four children and more than twenty defendants. In the lengthy resolution, two of the judges -
Néstor Costabell and Adriana Pallioti
- remarked that
the crime preceding the operations for 60 million dollars was the road contracts
that Austral Construcciones received during Kirchner's administration. There was talk of
"state corruption"
and
collusion "of former officials"
who allowed Báez "to make millionaire contaminated funds" from the state.
On the former business partner of Cristina Kirchner weighs a sentence of 12 years in prison for the crime of money laundering in the case known as the Route of Money K. On February 24, the sentence with which the TOF 4 condemned was read. to the contractor for having laundered 55 million dollars between 2010 and 2013. For that reason, he will have to pay a fine of 480 million dollars.
This Monday the foundations of that sentence were known.
"They have been considered accredited and the criminal responsibility of each of the accused," says the resolution to which
Clarín
agreed
, where the accusation was ratified: "It is considered absolutely proven that between 2010 and 2013 Lázaro Antonio Báez sketched a machine at the service of laundering the spurious funds it held, making use of different natural and legal persons who, to a greater or lesser extent, made their contributions to carry out a global maneuver of money laundering without precedent in this country ”. These people "deployed their actions both at home and abroad."
When they specifically addressed the money laundering structure, the magistrates said that they were dealing with "
a criminal endeavor conceived and planned with sophistication and professionalism
, with nothing being left to chance." This implied the joint action of several interveners, "whose roles were distributed and orchestrated through an organization scheme, highlighting that the global maneuver in question has the tints of transnational crimes."
Could Lázaro Báez do this without the help of the state? No, at least without the money that they provided through tenders, two of the three judges of the TOF 4 understood.
The money that went to all operations came from the same place
: the construction company that in Santa Cruz made 86% of the road contracts that the national State tendered.
A central point of the lengthy resolution was the preceding offense, since every money laundering maneuver requires one.
It was recalled that the Prosecutor's Office in charge of
Abel Córdoba
and the complaints understood that it
was related to the facts judged in the "Highway" case
, and in the rest in which events constituting tax fraud are aired.
In that case, Cristina Kirchner is prosecuted as the head of an illicit association
that would have dedicated itself to defrauding the State by directing 51 bids in favor of Báez, for 46,000 million pesos.
Lázaro Báez, in one of the hearings of the oral trial for the Ruta del Dinero K. Photo EFE.
The resolution detailed that the funds that were the object of the money laundering maneuvers
"flowed mainly and predominantly from the events of state and corporate corporate corruption aired in the Roads case
.
"
At that point, they mentioned that Lázaro Báez “increased his contracting capacity, to later consummate the directing of the tenders, through the simulation of the concurrence of the different companies to the so-called tenders, when, in reality, they were the firms of a same conglomerate ”.
Both the facts investigated in the Vialidad case -whose oral trial is the only one that
Cristina Kirchner
has in full swing- “allow us to maintain that Lázaro Báez, in his capacity as one more organizer of the illicit association aired there, and as beneficiary of the funds publics fraudulently diverted in his favor, he
instrumentalized his firm Austral as a shell company
, so that millionaire sums of money taken from the State would flow into their coffers -and become confused in their patrimony. This operated
in collusion "with the former public officials of the time and members of that criminal consortium."
That description includes the vice president.
That central axis, the judges continued, “shows that Lázaro Báez chose to generate his own money laundering plant, in the way he did and has been proven, since he would receive illicit millionaire flows as
one more member of the parent company. of state and corporate corruption mounted for the fraudulent allocation of public
road works in the province of Santa Cruz ”.
In addition, they stated that the "planned reception of millionaire funds", which the Austral Group perceived "as a beneficiary of the fraud and at the same time one more organizer of the illicit association that it was part of, explains, of course, why Lázaro Antonio Báez is not it was enough to launder money with occasionally resorting to third party operators of illegal banking and financial markets, who could incidentally provide those services ”.
To this questioning, justices Costabel and Pallioti responded as follows: “Because it was agreed that Lázaro Antonio Báez would be the recipient of
millionaire financial flows, diverted from the National State
by those who shared membership with him in the illicit association, he even owed advance on the takeover of an already established financial company -SGI SA-, structured
an onshore and offshore pipeline to channel the torrent of illicit money
”.
Those funds were "taken from the State" by Báez - together with former officials of the Cristina Kirchner government - "as one more organizer of that illicit association" and "explain, in some way, the zeal put by the former in keeping the maneuvers under his control. iron control -and as far as this is possible-, deciding and executing the procedures in a limited environment, not only family but also professional ”.
Cristina Kirchner in the dock during the first hearing of the oral trial for corruption in the highway case.
Photo Maxi Failla.
This operation carried out by Báez worked “from within the criminal group that organized and embedded in the structure of Austral Construcciones, in addition to constituting, on its part, the commission of repeated and permanent money laundering maneuvers, it also became a a way to
ensure the material exhaustion -or realization- of the multiple criminal plans of the illicit association
, of which it took part together with the former public officials of that time, ”the magistrates said.
The funds that Báez laundered, the judges continued, "are predominantly represented by the money taken from the National State, that is, the material object on which
the frauds perpetrated by him and by the remaining members of that illicit association
fell
,
"
always in reference to the former civil servants tried in the Roads case.
Arrival of Lázaro Báez to the country Ayes del Pilar where neighbors denied him entry in the first attempt to release the businessman, in September 2020. Photo Rafael Mario Quinteros.
For the magistrates there is a point that cannot be dismissed, and that is that
these public monies entered Báez's pockets “already contaminated”
by the fraud maneuvers: directing of the bids and average surcharges of 65%. The businessman K was the one who later "proceeded to deploy the laundering or laundering maneuvers."
The financial activity of the National State is the legal cause that allows to give legitimacy to these budgeted funds.
But the fraud - the judges pointed out - turned “that original legal cause into another undoubtedly illicit one.
These repeated frauds, perpetrated from within the National State, altered the budgetary destination of those funds
, and, therefore, when the payments in favor of Lázaro Antonio Báez were made, they were irremediably contaminated and thus they entered his coffers ".
Thus, they refuted one of the central arguments of the defense of Cristina Kirchner in the highway case, as follows: “In this framework, maintaining that the public funds in question, because they were of legal origin, cannot be laundered, constitutes, as much less, a fallacy ”.
