The Federal Oral Court 2 released this Wednesday the arguments of the sentences handed down last December in the framework of the Road Case against Cristina Kirchner and other defendants. One of the surprises in the verdict had been the acquittal of former Federal Planning Minister Julio de
Vido ,
pointed out for favoring Lázaro Báez with public works that were not controlled and were overpriced.
This Thursday, the judges explained why they made that decision.
In the first instance, the magistrates had defined De Vido's participation as "limited".
Now, in more than 20 pages of the 1616 that the folio of the foundations of the decision of the Judicial Power of the Nation has, the judges gave the reasons why the trusted man of Néstor Kirchner had no criminal responsibility in the maneuver
for
the which Lázaro Báez received millions of pesos in public road works.
The prosecutor's office in charge of Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola
had requested a ten-year sentence
for the crimes of illicit association and fraudulent administration.
In this sense, they had accused De Vido because his signature appeared on several decrees and resolutions related to the case.
The complaint, for its part, had postulated his acquittal on the understanding that the aforementioned illicit association and the fraudulent act could not be proven.
Finally, judges Jorge Gorini, Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu and Andrés Basso considered that "the criteria outlined by the prosecutors to attribute criminal responsibility to De Vido in relation to the fraudulent maneuver discussed and proven in the trial, are insufficient
"
.
When analyzing the arguments of the defense of the former Minister of Federal Planning (2003-2015) and the testimonies of witnesses during the oral and public trial;
the judges considered that De Vido
had no relationship with public road works.
On that point, they explained, it fell to the area of José López, sentenced to six years in prison and perpetual disqualification from holding public office.
"The elaboration, proposal and execution of the national policy on road infrastructure works was a political objective in charge of the Ministry of Public Works," they stated in the ruling.
When assessing De Vido's responsibility within the framework of this structure, they added: "The national road agency, a decentralized entity with legal status, a specific public purpose and its own assets, was within the jurisdiction of the Undersecretary of Public Works The internal control of the road entity, according to the Financial Administration Law, was in charge of the superior authority of the entity. And its subsequent external control was the responsibility of the General Audit Office of the Nation".
In relation to the criminal responsibility that was attributed to him for the breach of a normative duty to act, they considered that "it is clear that there was no close relationship between the accused (De Vido), the alleged omitter, and the damaged state assets. Therefore , the position of guarantor invoked did not exist either".
And they added: "Regarding the actions that were presented to us as excessively arbitrary of the powers conferred, we conclude that in all of them the accused
behaved within the limits
of the permitted act, in accordance with his functional competence, having failed the accusation in the concrete and punctual identification of the extra-criminal duty allegedly infringed by De Vido".
The judges also stated that "there was no supposed legal or normative attribution based on which De Vido would have held the position of guarantor for the purposes of avoiding singular risks for public funds in any of the stages of the complex administrative journey until its arrival in a road entity".
"The legal duty to safeguard the safety of the capital destined for public road works does not emerge from the functional competence of the role that it once held" De Vido, they added.
In another fragment of the ruling, they stressed some differences with "the presidential will", which -they said- "is indisputable that it has primacy over that of the authenticating ministers."
In this regard, they highlighted that the prosecution "failed to identify any probative point, direct or indicative, that would account for the fact that De Vido was aware of the
true aims pursued
."
"The accusation failed to demonstrate the defendant's knowledge of the possibility of damage or a specific interest in relation to the undue profit obtained from this affectation of state assets," they determined.
And they concluded: "This is, as we have been saying, the characteristic note that made it possible to differentiate so emphatically their situation from that of the former president (Cristina) and her Secretary of Public Works, which at the same time coincides with the attachment to legal risk allowed that we have verified in its various administrative interventions".
When evaluating the responsibility of Julio De Vido within the framework of this structure, the judges evaluated "his limited interventions in the framework of the proven facts and the absence of a particular interest to seek -for himself or for a third party- a undue profit with funds from the public treasury".
look too
Cause Road: the judges assured in the sentence against Cristina Kirchner that "an act of state corruption" was proven
The sentence of Cristina Kirchner: after the publication of the grounds, the Vice President is already preparing the appeal