Aerial view of Joe Lewis's mansion in Lago Escondido, in Argentine Patagonia.
Argentina is awaiting the ruling of the first trial for alleged corruption against Argentina's most powerful politician, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The sentence will be known on Tuesday, December 6.
The leaking to the press of messages between judges, opposition politicians and media businessmen has further raised the previous tension.
In the chat published this Sunday by local media, the participants debate how to spread a false version with which to counter the complaint for gifts linked to a paid trip they made to Patagonia last October.
The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, has announced on a national television channel that he will request the Justice to criminally investigate the events related to the trip and its financing and that the Judicial Council open an investigation against the judges involved.
Kirchnerism exhibits the conversation, supposedly obtained by hackers, as "the precise x-ray of the rottenness of
lawfare
[the use of the judiciary for political purposes]", in the words of the Minister of Justice, Martín Soria.
For the macrismo, on the other hand, it is a great montage whose objective is to try to save Kirchner from what, they hope, will be this Tuesday a negative sentence in the so-called "Road case."
The messages involve Judge Julián Ercolini, in charge of the investigation in the investigation against Cristina Kirchner;
his colleagues Pablo Yadarola, Carlos Mahiques and Pablo Cayssials;
the attorney general of the city of Buenos Aires, Juan Bautista Mahiques;
the Minister of Security of the city of Buenos Aires, Marcelo D'Alessandro;
and two directors of Grupo Clarín, among others.
The chats were published by the newspaper
Argentinian time
and the web portal
The Rocket to the Moon
from the hacking of the cell phone line of one of those involved.
The illegal origin of the source prevents them from being used as evidence in court.
NATIONAL CHAIN - Message from the President of the Nation, Alberto Fernández (@alferdez).
https://t.co/mXynKn4OXE
— Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) December 5, 2022
The participants of the Telegram chat are concerned about the publication in the newspaper
Página 12
of a paid trip they made on October 13 by private plane to Bariloche to stay for a couple of nights at the ranch of English billionaire Joe Lewis in Lago Hidden.
Lewis is close to former President Mauricio Macri and his ranch is an old acquaintance of Argentines, due to the businessman's decision to block tourists from entering the lake.
In the exchange, those involved analyze whether or not to respond to journalists who call them to confirm the trip
and they discuss different strategies to make it pass as a joint getaway that they paid for out of pocket.
"We could find out the issue of a bill [payment receipt] in Lago Escondido," Juan Bautista Mahiques, attorney general of the city of Buenos Aires, is heard saying in a voice message.
Cayssals proposes to pay for the plane and say that they stayed at the house of a friend of his, but Ercolini asks if it wouldn't be easier if he billed them Lago Escondido for “two nights with half board”.
"And to hell, we don't have to invent anything," insists Ercolini, according to the leaked messages, who agrees with the others on the need to keep the photos taken during the journey under lock and key.
Participants mock and criticize many of the journalists who contact them, boasting about not responding to them and calling on big media executives to stop the spread of the news.
However, the main target of their criticism is the Airport Security Police (PSA), which they consider to be the origin of the leak of the air travel form on October 13.
"If at some point I have to be a national minister, the first thing I do is dissolve the PSA," writes D'Alessandro, today in charge of the Security portfolio in the city of Buenos Aires.
Denial of Clarín
According to the media that published the news, the trip was financed by directors of Grupo Clarín, a version that the media conglomerate denies.
Sources from Grupo Clarín also warn that "much of the chat content is completely false [false] and adulterated, in addition to having an illegal origin."
Contacted by EL PAÍS, the prosecutor Juan Bautista Mahiques confirms that the trip existed, but denies the content of the chats.
He does not answer whether the trip was paid out of his own pocket or was an invitation.
The scandal led to a double complaint: before the Judicial Council for alleged "poor performance of their duties" by the judges and prosecutors allegedly involved;
and before the Justice of Bariloche, for an alleged "violation of the duties of a public official, admission of gifts and influence peddling."
The leak has once again divided Argentina in the hours before the verdict in the trial against Kirchner is known.
The vice president is accused of the crimes of illicit association and defrauding the State for the award of fifty public works in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz during her two terms as president (2007-2015).
The Kirchnerists maintain that the messages show collusion between the judiciary and the opposition against the vice president.
For the anti-Kirchnerists, it is an illegal espionage operation orchestrated as an armful of drowning before the sentence.
The controversy grew until it reached the top: the Casa Rosada.
Alberto Fernández convened a national television channel in which he assured that "for the first time, the way in which certain corporations operate with officials, judges and prosecutors seeking favors from them that in many cases seek undue advantages while in others they simply encourage the persecution of those who confront them.”
Fernández asked the justice system to investigate.
Legislators from the ruling coalition, the Frente de Todos, made the same request in a joint statement.
“The poor performance of their duties, the commission of crimes, and the serious and scandalous ethical misconduct are confessed.
We demand the immediate institutional regularization of the Judicial Council paralyzed by the not innocent actions of the Supreme Court of Justice, the resignation of the public officials involved and a serious and in-depth investigation," they state in the text.
The legislators affirm that it is public knowledge that magistrates and prosecutors operate outside the law "but seeing and hearing it from their own voice exceeds anything imagined."
opposition reaction
From the opposition alliance Juntos por el Cambio, where the politicians involved come from, there were few voices that had come out in the middle of the afternoon to defend the Buenos Aires Minister of Security.
One of the first was the president of the Republican Proposal (Pro), Patricia Bullrich, who considered that the leak is part of "the desperate attempts of Kirchnerism to evade justice."
Once again, the Kirchner mafia at its best.
They finance with everyone's taxes a tragicomic intelligence operation to save the boss.
They threaten and extort money because it is the only way they know how to do politics.
Nobody believes them.
— Marcelo D'Alessandro (@MarceDaless) December 5, 2022
Bullrich's hypothesis coincides with that of D'Alessandro, who has accused Kirchnerism through the networks of financing “with everyone's taxes a tragicomic intelligence operation to save the boss”, that is, Kirchner.
The D'Alessandro team, contacted by this newspaper, did not respond to the queries.
The leak further worsens the image of the Judiciary in Argentina and its relationship with politics.
A federal judge who prefers to keep his name confidential opined that what happened "is very serious."
"The impunity with which they operate is shameful, how they torture journalists and make all of us judges look bad."
For the president of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, Alejandro Slokar, the highest judicial authority below the Supreme Court, the Judiciary "lives a radical crisis" and asked to take action.
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