The Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation confirmed the conviction in the case of
the K Money Route
, endorsing the decision of the Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4): Lázaro Báez set up a structure that allowed
55 million dollars to be laundered between 2010 and 2013
These maneuvers were carried out through Austral Construcciones, the firm that received 51 road tenders from the State "riddled with irregularities" and that earned Cristina Kirchner her first conviction for corruption
.
When reviewing the sentences, with a majority and not unanimous vote, Chamber IV of the Chamber of Cassation reduced the sentence of Cristina Kirchner's former business partner, from
12 to
10 years in prison.
This criterion caused the other sentences to also be modified: Martín Báez, who had been in prison for nine years, was sentenced to six and a half years.
The youngest of the businessman's sons, Leandro, who had a five-year sentence, ended up sentenced to three years in prison.
The only two acquittals are for Lázaro's daughters, Luciana and Melina Báez
, who had been sentenced to three years in prison at the trial
.
This decision was not unanimous: Judge
Javier Carbajo
voted to uphold the sentences handed down by the Trial Court.
Báez's former lawyer, Jorge Chueco
, must face six years in prison
, while his former accountant,
Daniel Pérez Gadín
, had his sentence reduced to five years.
The only accused collaborator with whom this file has,
Leonardo Fariña
, also obtained a reduction in the sentence handed down: he has three and a half years in prison ahead of him.
As determined in this case, the former business partner of the vice was the essential and indisputable link in a structure that
over three years (2010-2013) laundered 55 million dollars
.
Nothing could have materialized without Austral Construcciones, Báez's flagship firm that began its activity in May 2003, when Néstor Kirchner arrived at the Casa Rosada.
The funds that came from the public road works that he systematically won,
were partly turned over to laundering operations
, as condemned by the TOF 4.
When considering the use of Austral Construcciones and the Top Air air taxi firm, the Court of Cassation confirmed the confiscation of both companies for a sum equivalent to 300 million
dollars.
In addition, the confiscation of assets for a value equivalent to 65 million dollars
was confirmed .
In an extensive resolution, chambermaids
Mariano Borinsky, Javier Carbajo
and judge
Ángela Ledesma
confirmed that Lázaro Báez along with 16 other people spent three years laundering money.
Ledesma and Borinsky considered that the predicate offense through which Báez collected the illegal funds that he later laundered
was tax evasion
.
His colleague Carbajo, on the other hand, maintained that the origin of this money came from evasion but also from corruption in public works, as two TOF 4 judges had signed.
For the judges, "it was proven that through a sophisticated corporate and financial mechanism, which included the use of 'shell' companies - evading fiscal controls -", the defendants managed to launder millions of dollars of money.
These operations were structured as follows: firstly, the funds were expatriated "for transactions in different international banks", mainly in relation to accounts opened in Switzerland.
The final stage of the circuit included a "repatriation for a stock market operation with the appearance of legality (money laundering), along with other assets that were detected and confiscated."
Austral Construcciones was used to purchase bonds and thus re-enter the circuit of money of illicit origin.
The amount investigated and that meant the former business partner of Cristina Kirchner his first conviction for money laundering, amounts to
54,870,000 dollars,
"this total amount coincides with the previous tax evasions carried out by Lázaro Báez," the chamberlains considered.
The washing circuit
The highest criminal court found that all the defendants formed a legal, corporate and banking structure in Argentina and abroad, "through which funds from of crimes".
The purpose of this circuit, highlighted the Cassation, was aimed at "cutting all ties with their illegal source and integrating those assets into the formal economic circuit under a lawful appearance."
This was achieved through the so-called
“cable” or “compensation” mechanism;
Thus they managed to expatriate large sums of money.
For this, it was essential to use the financial and banking services of an intermediary institution that had accounts in banks abroad, which allowed the compensation of "amounts of money from those who wanted to transfer foreign currency abroad and from those who wanted to repatriate them outside the mechanisms of control in force".
In this part of the laundering network,
the financial company SGI - la "Rosadita" -
was used , which was known for the images in which, between whiskeys and cigars,
Martín Báez and other former partners of Báez counted five million dollars
.
In this regard, Chamber IV said that "it was proven that the money thus deposited abroad entered the accounts of various international banks -generally with low fiscal controls- in the name of other legal entities, which the defendants later circulated."
Finally, the money was collected in an account through which public debt bonds were acquired that were later "settled in the local market, simulating
a supposed multimillion-dollar investment by a Swiss trust company
to acquire shares of the Austral Construcciones company."
However, it was proven that the owner of the undeclared capital, which was deposited in the name of other people and, after circulation "entered into the Austral account, was always Lázaro Báez, who used different co-defendants
to
launder the money of spurious origin, originating from illicit acts of tax crimes".
Reduced penalties
The one on the Money Route K is considered
the largest trial in the matter of money laundering
carried out in Comodoro Py.
For the most part, the accusatory sentences responded to the maximum sentence that corresponds to the crime of asset laundering.
However, by confirming the laundering maneuver, in which the use of the construction company that had the State as its only client for twelve years was essential,
the sentence against Báez was reduced from twelve to ten years.
Martín Báez was sentenced
to nine years
;
but the Cassation reduced this accusation to six and a half years, while his brother
Leandro
, who had been sentenced to
five years
, was given three years by the courtrooms.
Báez's daughters acquitted
The slightest and suspended accusation had been for the businessman's daughters:
Melina and Luciana were sentenced to three years.
However, judges Borinsky and Ledesma resolved to acquit them, considering that the sentences against both "
were not handed down with a gender perspective
, in particular, at the time of carrying out the evidentiary assessment of the insufficient elements collected against them."
The two magistrates,
with the dissent of Carbajo
, pointed out that the daughters of Lázaro Báez "
did not have any intervention in the main maneuver
and it was emphasized that they had no place in the family businesses."
Contrary to what the trial court ruled, the two chambers indicated that Lázaro Báez assigned his daughters "a marginal role exclusively aimed at taking
care of domestic aspects within the family
but without interfering in business activity."
To this proposal they added an analysis "with a gender perspective", according to the resolution.
Judges Borinsky and Ledesma understood that this "corresponded to
stereotyped parameters of what is usually awarded to women,
due to their condition as such, as a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men."
look also
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