Last year, a few days apart, two judges of the Federal Oral Court 2 (TOF 2) who were judging the Highway case
lost control of their cell phones
, while the trial against
Cristina Kirchner
was in the defense arguments stage, after of a sentencing order from prosecutor
Diego Luciani
.
The situation turned on alert lights: it had been weeks since the area of reserved statements by national and federal judges had been intruded on in the Judicial Council.
Those same judges were two of the twenty-four victims of that illegal rape.
In addition, last week it was learned that they were also "targets" of the 22-year-old who from Misiones hacked an extensive list of telephones.
The victims?
Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu and Andrés Basso.
A week ago, in his investigation,
Elías Ezequiel Nuñes Pinheiro
acknowledged that he carried out the SIM SWAP maneuver against the cell phone of the now former Minister of City Security, Marcelo D'Alessandro.
But during the seven hours that he testified before the Buenos Aires judge
Araceli Martínez
and the prosecutor specialized in cybercrime
Cecilia Dupuy
, he gave more details and told about "other objectives" for which they hired him.
It was then that the hacker spoke of the judges Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu and Andrés Basso.
Both are members of TOF 2, which since May 2019 carried out the first trial for acts of corruption against Cristina.
When the oral debate was going to enter the arguments stage, with the nine days that the prosecutor Luciani was in charge of in the first days of August and that concluded with a request for twelve years in prison against the vice president, an abnormal situation alerted
the Judiciary
: the intrusion of unknown persons into the Asset Declarations Office of judges of the Judicial Council.
It was determined that in this intrusion the envelopes with the annexes with confidential information corresponding to 24 national judges and judicial officials were reviewed, among them the three members of the Federal Oral Court 2. In addition to Giménez Uriburu and Basso, they also spied on the affidavit of
his colleague Jorge Gorini.
Citizens have access to the affidavit with the general data, but not to the envelopes
where the bank account numbers and the addresses of the judges' houses are
, for example.
This data can only be accessed with a court order.
In Comodoro Py they maintain that this fact became "the prelude to a series of hacks" that
could be "related to the hack started from Misiones"
and that the 22-year-old confessed.
On September 13 of last year,
six days before Cristina Kirchner's lawyer -Carlos Beraldi- began his argument in the trial,
Judge Giménez Uriburu denounced that the company that provided his cell phone line had ordered
a chip change that he had not managed or authorized.
As reported by the magistrate at that time, Movistar informed him that they had changed the chip in his device.
And then they clarified that if he had not carried out the process, he could contact the customer service telephone number.
One detail: that attack occurred while the oral trial of Cristina was progressing, and
the vice president denounced and challenged the magistrate
for being part of a soccer team that participated in a tournament that, among other venues, was played in the Los Abrojos estate, owned by Mauricio Macri.
Giménez Uriburu denounced the irregularity in justice.
He was concerned
about possible access to his bank account data
, having as a background what happened in the Judicial Council.
Sources of that investigation indicated to
Clarín
that "the reports submitted by the companies that provide the cellular telephone service did not manage to identify who sold the chips to, but it
was established that the chip was purchased in Misiones
."
This data became more relevant when last week Elías Ezequiel Nuñes Pinheiro confessed that
among his "targets" for the hacking of phones was Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu.
He did everything from Eldorado, the missionary town near Paraguay.
Another fact is taken into account these days in federal justice.
The list of cell phones that the young man was asked to hack
included Andrés Basso
, another of the TOF 2 members.
On September 30, 2022, twenty-seven days after what happened with Giménez Uriburu's cell phone,
Basso lost control of his cell phone.
He contacted Movistar and there they told him that someone, claiming to be the owner of the line,
had requested a replacement of his phone's chip.
Given this circumstance, the judge filed an administrative complaint, understanding that the company's security protocols did not work correctly.
When his cell phone line was restored,
he decided not to file the criminal complaint.
Seven days had passed since the vice president made her plea in the oral trial for the Highway case.
Andrés Basso was the only one of the three judges who considered that Cristina Kirchner had to be sentenced as head of an illegal association, in addition to the accusation for the crime of fraudulent administration.
Also with a minority vote, the judge was the one who understood that
there was sufficient evidence to convict Cristóbal López and Fabián de Sousa
in the trial for defrauding the State of 8,000 million pesos through their Oil Combustibles firm.
The only person convicted was Ricardo Echegaray
as the former head of the AFIP, but not the businessmen who, according to Basso, were necessary for the maneuver to come to fruition.
The progress of the case for illegal espionage
The young Elías Ezequiel Nuñes Pinheiro was the only one who confessed to five defendants in the file that he is processing in the Buenos Aires justice system.
Along with him, his father, Elías Nuñes Pinheiro, and other alleged members of the network that was engaged in illegal intelligence acts are being investigated:
Antonio Aquino, Julio César Escobar and Cecilia Mercado
.
They all have residence in
El Dorado, a missionary town on the border with Paraguay,
although they have a unique piece of information: "for the hacks they would have used
a user with credentials administered by the Nation's Chief of Staff
that allowed them to access personal data of the reserved victims in the National Registry of Persons”, judicial sources explained to
Clarín.
To collect for the commissioned hacks, Nuñez Pinheiro said that
he received an average of 15,000 pesos for each objective
and that
he was paid with cryptocurrencies.
That is why
the virtual wallet Lemon is being investigated,
from where he charged. At this stage of the investigation, the suspects are charged with crimes of aggravated damage, violation of secrets and privacy, unauthorized dissemination of intimate images or recordings, digital impersonation of identity, among other accusations that may arise from the seized evidence.
look also
Illegal espionage: The president of the Court denounced that in Misiones they took out four telephone lines in his name
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