Lucia Salinas
08/23/2021 18:22
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 08/23/2021 6:22 PM
The prosecutor Claudio Navas, who is investigating the case of the alleged shipment of supplies to Bolivia during the administration of Mauricio Macri, expanded the accusation against Marcos Peña, Fulvio Pompeo and Jorge Faurie.
The prosecutor made the decision after the Minister of Security, Sabina Frederic, expanded the complaint in Justice and sought to implicate these former Macrista officials.
The case, which investigates an alleged aggravated smuggling of anti-riot equipment to Bolivia days after the forced departure of Evo Morales, in November 2019, was started by a complaint from the Government of Alberto Fernández.
"The official documents found in recent weeks give account of facts that reinforce what was duly denounced: it was Mauricio Macri, the former President of the Nation, who directly ordered and organized the smuggling maneuver," says the extension of the complaint that Introduced Frederic last week.
The ministers of Justice and Security, Martín Soria and Sabina Frederic, and the federal administrator of Public Revenue, Mercedes Marcó del Pont, criminally denounced Mauricio Macri and former ministers Patricia Bullrich, Jorge Faurie and Oscar Aguad, and a handful of former officials for "contraband aggravated" by the "irregular shipment of weapons and ammunition" to that country "through an adulteration in the quantities and destinations declared in the different control instances and, in particular, before the customs service ".
The case was left in court by the Criminal and Economic Judge Javier López Biscayart and the prosecutor Navas.
For the prosecutor, "the elements provided by the complainants" allow "to direct the investigation's attention to the conduct attributed to the then Chief of Cabinet, Marcos Peña, to the chancellor, Jorge Faurie, and to the Secretary of Strategic Affairs of the Nation, Fulvio Pompeo regarding an alleged participation in the organization and development of the necessary conditions for the dispatch of the gendarmes and the aforementioned weapons material to the Plurinational State of Bolivia. "
The representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office considered that the former macrista officials "violated the proper exercise of control of the customs service." He added that, since the facts described in their previous opinions are the same, but that now they would be revealed in more detail and new evidence, "the criminal action is duly instituted and is in force." It also considered that the evidence measures requested by the complainants - which are in addition to those already requested by the prosecution - were "conducive to ascertaining the truth."
In their new presentation, Frederic, Soria and Marcó del Pont pointed out the existence of two meetings held on November 12, 2019 at the Casa Rosada. In the first of them, former President Mauricio Macri would have met privately with Faurie, who after the meeting would have signed a "suspicious note, hitherto unknown" by means of which he requested -outside the electronic and mandatory official communications system- , the sending of personnel from the National Gendarmerie to Bolivia, with the supposed purpose of defending the Argentine embassy in that country, which was in charge of the then ambassador Normando Álvarez García.
They also added the existence of a second meeting held in Peña's office, in which the former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and the former head of the National Gendarmerie Gerardo Otero -among others- were present, and that in those meetings The contraband maneuver of the war material that was delivered by the national forces to the Bolivian Police and Air Force on November 13, 2019, was ordered and organized.
The complainants added to the file the records of entry to the Casa Rosada of November 12, 2019, which "show that the decision to send repressive material to Bolivia to support the coup was taken at the Casa Rosada." For the minister, these records show that "hours before the departure of the flight with the illegal shipment of arms and ammunition bound for Bolivia, Mauricio Macri held two transcendental meetings for the maneuver."
In the details of the forms, they indicated that the first coincides with a "key moment of smuggling. According to the notes signed on November 12 by the gendarme Yavorsky, the procedure for the shipment of 70,000 ammunition and more than 600 grenades smuggling was initiated by the Gendarmerie at 13:06 that day. " The complaint indicates that at that precise moment, "Macri, Peña, Bullrich, the director of the Gendarmerie (Gerardo Otero) and his private secretary were meeting, along with the directors of all the security forces, in Peña's office."
The head of the Security portfolio maintains that the meeting in the Casa Rosada, in which Otero, Yavorsky's superior, and his private secretary participated, "confirms that the order to send this material was taken directly by the highest authorities of the Government of Macri ". To give strength to this thesis, they indicated that this complementary material "was added to the one that had already been processed and authorized the previous day (November 11); and it coincides exactly with what was received by the Police and the Bolivian Air Force on the 13th. of November".
They observed that the meeting was held 12 hours before the gendarmes left for Bolivia on the Hercules C-130, "and had other peculiarities: it was held in Marcos Peña's office, the only one with direct access to the presidential office. ; and it was the first admission of Gerardo Otero (Director of the Gendarmerie) to Casa Rosada in all of 2019 ".