In the countdown for the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation to decide whether or not Cristina Kirchner and her children will face the oral trial in the Hotesur and Los Sauces cases, the Court that with a majority vote dismissed the vice ordered that for one more year
the AFIP is in charge of overseeing family businesses investigated for money laundering
.
The resolution also reaches the Maximum Condominium and Florencia Kirchner and the boutique hotel that has been closed for six years.
The Federal Oral Court 5 (TOF 5) signed a series of resolutions addressed to the head of the AFIP,
Carlos Castagneto,
informing that for twelve more months, the collecting agency will continue to be in charge of the oversight of the real estate agency Los Sauces SA, the Condominium which manages the assets resulting from the succession of former President Kirchner, the Los Sauces Casa Patagónica boutique hotel and the Hotesur firm - owner of the Alto Calafate hotel and others.
Castagneto
is a former official of Alicia Kirchner
in the Ministry of Social Development, and the vice president's most trusted man.
The purpose of the measure is
to "monitor the conservation of the heritage"
of this group of companies owned by the Kirchner family.
With the oversight headed by accountants Ariel Canteros and Gerardo Paludi, the AFIP must ensure that the assets that make up this group of firms
"do not suffer deterioration."
Money movements are also a central point of oversight.
The Court indicated that
the accountants must "verify receipts and expenditures of money,
inform if the extraction of money as credit with the company or advances or withdrawals from the petty cash is verified by the partners, and inform this judiciary of any irregularities let them warn the administration”.
Two years ago, before judges Daniel Obligado and Adrián Grünberg signed the dismissal without trial, they decided to return to the Kirchners the administration of their companies and assets, which had been seized on suspicion of being used for money laundering.
However, that restitution of the administration brought with it the oversight of the treasury, which on April 6 was renewed for another year.
What remains ahead is to know the vote of Judge
Ana María Figueroa
- a member of Chamber I of Cassation - who must decide whether Cristina, Máximo and Florencia Kirchner (along with thirteen other defendants) will face the oral trial or not.
Her peers, judges
Daniel Petrone and Diego Barroetaveña,
have already cast their vote within the deadlines established by the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Judge Figueroa traveled to the Vatican
to participate in a meeting of magistrates and former magistrates, in which
Eugenio Zaffaroni
participated and where lawfare was discussed
as a "method of indoctrination" of politics by the justice system.
A vision that coincides with the main defense thesis of the vice president in all judicial files for acts of corruption that she faces in Comodoro Py.
The accusation with which Cristina Kirchner and her children were sent to an oral trial maintains that
their company Hotesur "received money from Lázaro Báez" through the hotel business
"under a certain appearance of legitimacy", which ensured that they could testify these funds before the Anti-Corruption Office and before the treasury "hiding their true origin" supposedly illegal.
54% of Hotesur's income came from Austral Construcciones, through loans and contracts, such as funds that the company sent to Valle Miter (de Báez), used to manage the Alto Calafate hotel.
A company with no business
Since the company was intervened in 2017, and until 2021, after being headless after the failure to designate authorities before the General Inspectorate of Justice (IGJ), something was exposed by the judicial administrator: Hotesur's line of business was unfeasible
.
In his indictment, prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita remarked: "from the logic of the criminal charges, both companies, Hotesur and Sauces, were acquired for the same purpose: to channel and recycle funds with the appearance of legality."
And he remarked that "they never had a commercial purpose", but
only to be used as "screens" for laundering operations.
Criticism of the AFIP
When it was decided that the AFIP be the body that would control the movements of funds once the intervention was lifted, there was an opposition from the prosecutor Diego Velasco, the same one who maintained that the oral trial should be carried out.
In his opinion, this task should be the responsibility of the General Audit Office of the Nation (AGN).
To support his position, he said that it is "an entity of constitutional rank, autonomous, with its own legal status, functional independence and autarchy, specialized precisely in the function of auditing, more specific and impregnated with the impartiality that implies not only
its
nature but also its integration with a majority in charge of the opposition, but also with representation of other political forces".
The representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office remarked that one should not lose sight of the fact that this case "has as its main legal right the economic and financial order and thus, although it is about signatures that are not public (which would merit the direct designation of the AGN ), it is no less true that
there is an expectation of a confiscation sanction on the part of the State
, so the need to have that body and not the AFIP then becomes clear," he insisted.
