The investigations begin for the irregular withdrawal of $ 11.4 million in cash from Public TV

Alexander Alfie

07/05/2021 17:58

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 07/05/2021 18:01

Federal judge Luis Rodríguez summoned the set designer

Adriana Maestri

to give an investigative statement

, for this Wednesday, July 7,

in the judicial case for the irregular withdrawal of $ 11.4 million in cash from Public TV.

It also decided that 

five public TV officials 

give a statement as of August 4, after the judicial fair, since they asked to postpone the investigation to analyze the evidence against them.

The inquiries of the five officials and the set designer Maestri were requested by

the federal prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita

;

and they will be by videoconference, depending on the protocols established by the coronavirus pandemic.

The complaint was filed by Ricardo Benedetti and Jimena Casiñeira

against the head of RTA, Rosario Lufrano, who is in charge of the company that runs National Radio and Public TV.

To that complaint was later added another from the defendant Lufrano herself.

The court case

is titled "Lufrano, Rosario,

on breach of authority and violation of the duties of a public official, and misappropriation of public funds." There, the prosecutor Pollicita stated that the "fraud maneuver" was deployed between February 26 and March 8 by officials Guillermo Siaira, Ernesto Molinero, Alejandro de la Torre, Ariel Berliner and Claudio Lamalfa, with the participation of set designer Adriana Maestri, among others.

The five RTA officials and Public TV extracted $ 11.4 million in cash from the RTA account, "in the context of the start-up of the internal production

Los amores prohibited de Belgrano

", as advance payments, "with the object of materializing the discretionary acquisition of various products and services,

disregarding the regulatory regulations

of the activity carried out there and

circumventing the internal control mechanisms

existing in the aforementioned State Society, "said prosecutor Pollicita.

This operation "generated undue profit by not having the proper authorization from the RTA Board of Directors or the approval of a budget to support them," added the prosecutor.

And he stressed that this operation was interrupted not by his own decision "but by

the public state of the situation that led the RTA Presidency

to adopt measures with a view to recovering part of the funds."

Of the $ 11.4 million,

the prosecutor stated that $ 8.1 million were recovered

, while the rest were presented vouchers that "were made a priori for the benefit of the defendants themselves and unrelated to the purpose for which they were managed."

The legal classification of the investigated crimes is of unfaithful administration to the detriment of the public administration, abuse of authority and negotiations incompatible with the exercise of the public function, with penalties that reach up to

six years in prison and disqualification from holding public office.

The officials whom Judge Luis Rodríguez summoned for investigation are

Guillermo Siaira

, Director of Administration and Finance, who will appear on August 4; and

Ernesto Molinero

, Production Manager (August 10), who had contracts with Public TV and submitted their resignations, at Lufrano's request. Also the treasurer

Claudio Lamalfa

(August 12), who would be the one who withdrew the $ 11.4 million from the Banco Itaú branch that is within the facilities of the state channel.

In addition, the judge summoned

Alejandro de la Torre

, Deputy Director of Administration and Finance, and

Ariel Berliner

, Deputy Manager of Production (August 11), who have been prohibited from entering the channel, for more than two months, since they have permanent staff positions, so the authorities preferred to wait for the administrative proceedings to finish to decide if they were thrown out of the channel.

The sixth person that the judge called an investigation is

Adriana Maestri, who must appear this Wednesday, July 7

.

The set designer is not an employee of RTA or Public TV, but she obtained "undue benefits" from the irregular operation, as did the public officials, "causing economic damage to the public coffers as the opposite," she said in her opinion. the prosecutor Pollicita.

The set designer Maestri is the only provider cited by Judge Rodríguez.

It is that at the beginning of March she received $ 1.9 million in cash from the officials of Public TV, for her participation as art director in the miniseries, without competition or contract, according to the judicial file that

Clarín

had access to.

.

His case was put as an example

by the prosecutor Pollicita of the irregularities detected in the RTA company, which is in charge of Rosario Lufrano.

"The irregular benefit to third parties is clearly seen in the payment made to Adriana Maestri, to whom a total amount of $ 1,900,000 was paid,

without any type of contractual support and through direct purchase,

thereby violating the provisions of the Regulations of Hiring, "said the prosecutor Pollicita.

"The spurious addressing of this patrimonial provision was so evident that the payment of $ 1,900,000 was made in its entirety without the allegedly committed work being completed, in addition to the fact that there is

no document specifying the scope of the contracted service

, its form execution, delivery times, products to be purchased, contract and / or acquisition method, as is customary for any purchase in which public funds are committed, "said Pollicita.

Faced with the scandal that generated the irregular withdrawal of $ 11.4 million in cash, of which $ 1.9 million went to Maestri, the set designer

had to return everything she had not spent, which was $ 1,155,000.

For the other 745,000 "he presented a surrender that can be objected," said the prosecutor Pollicita, since the "vouchers provided were simple 'receipts' and not invoices as required" by current regulations.

On the contrary, Maestri assured

Clarín

that "we budgeted everything and started with my workshop. I presented an invoice of 1,550,000 plus VAT. I bought wood, pipes, paint, cutters, fabrics, slats, sticks, etc. and I spent 745,000 final. On the 8th. In March we started the assembly in Central Market of the first set. At 7:00 p.m. they called me and told me how much I had spent of what they gave me. They told me to bring what was left over, that there was a complaint,

so at 11 p.m. I go to the channel with 1,155,000 pesos

. We met with the costume and production girls, we were all returning the money and making emergency surrenders. "

Since the scandal broke out on Public TV, almost four months ago,

ten officials have already left,

including two executive directors of Public TV: Eliseo Alvarez, who suffered pressure peaks when the scandal broke out; and Leo Flores, who lasted only one week in office due to ideological pressures from ultra-Christian sectors and had to return to his previous position, as artistic manager of the channel.

The case became known when

Clarín

revealed last March that a director of Public TV withdrew several million in cash from the account that the channel has at Banco Itaú, to pay production expenses for a fiction about Manuel Belgrano;

and that the channel authorities had initiated an internal audit and had demanded that the managers involved return that money and deliver the receipts of the payments they made on those days, since they had to carry out the operations electronically, since

payment is prohibited. in cash and without a contract to Public TV providers.

Who is Adriana Maestri

Adriana Maestri has a long career

. She was the art director in the film "Puerta de Hierro, the exile of Perón"; he worked on the setting of other films, such as "Minimum Stories", "Felicidades" and "Facundo, la sombra del tigre". He also participated in the setting of Evita's office at CCK; in the scenography of the recital that Charly García gave at the Teatro Colón, in 2013; and he designed the staging of the recital that Fito Páez gave with his latest album, "The conquest of space", among other activities.

The set designer had already been hired last year to work on the same miniseries, to do the pre-production, for which she charged $ 187,550, which she told

Clarín

later distributed that money with a set designer and an air freshener.

But in February of this year Public TV decided to move forward.

And they hired her as an art director

, to take care of the costumes, set design and setting for the miniseries.

"There was a lot of pressure to start recording in mid-March. It

had to be on the air on June 20, yes or yes,"

Maestri told

Clarín

.

And that explained the rush that the officials put in, to comply with the directives of the channel's authorities, which they wanted to premiere on that date.

Maestri was a set designer who was summoned by the director of the miniseries, Alberto Lecchi, but who was also known by officials of the national government, since she

made the "patriotic" dolls of Zamba and San Martín

, which were located in Tecnópolis.

In addition, he later carried out the

reconstruction of the San Martín doll, in 2020

, with strong criticism of the macrista management.

"We recovered the head because the body was all broken," Maestri said at that time.

And he added: "The truth is that they scrapped it. It was a downturn, because they could have taken it apart and taken care of it."

The recovery of the giant doll of San Martín was one of the main measures in the start of the administration of the

Minister of Culture, Tristán Bauer

, who stated that the reconstruction of this doll had to do with the recovery of memory, because the macrismo had left "scorched earth" in Technopolis.

"The symbolic was destroyed and deteriorated.

To put the figure of San Martín there is to recover history and memory,

since the common past has to be contemplated to project ourselves into the future, they are our leaders who gave their lives to the best causes", Maestri raised on that occasion, in an interview with the state agency Télam.

However, shortly after, she herself was involved in a legal case, for the handling of money on Public TV for the Belgrano miniseries, for which she will have to give an investigative statement.