The judges who convicted Cristina Kirchner in the Vialidad case argued in the arguments of the ruling that Cristina and Lázaro Báez had a "close commercial bond" that formed a series of "promiscuous ties" that did not distinguish the interest of the public and the private. With those words they defined the relationship between the vice president and businessman K, who grew economically thanks to the arrival of his friend Néstor Kirchner to the presidency. Prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan referred to the same link, focusing on the 372 telephone communications that took place between the owner of Grupo Austral and the former president "and her main collaborators," as a sign of "the close bond."
When analyzing the road works that Lázaro Báez received during the twelve years of Kirchner's government, the federal justice maintained that this "criminal plan" that harmed the State in 80,000 million pesos, was carried out because the then president who aimed to benefit Báez with tenders, many of them plagued by irregularities.
The vice president and the Patagonian businessman were accused of carrying out "real estate and hotel businesses" while "simultaneously" the maneuver of defrauding the State was executed.
In that same period, Lázaro Báez managed to launder 55 million dollars, a maneuver that meant a sentence – confirmed by the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation – to ten years in prison for the crime of money laundering. The only monetary income your company had Austral Construcciones came from the questioned public road works contracts.
"Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was personally involved in the business interests of Austral Construcciones and in the cessation of its commercial – and criminal – activity in the field of public road works in Santa Cruz, an item that knew how to be the source of the undue profit obtained by the businessman for years and from which the former President and her family benefited economically," said the Federal Oral Court 2 in the conviction of the Vialidad case.
Now, focused on the K Money Route, prosecutor Marijuan indicated that despite the "clarity of that link between Lázaro Báez and Cristina Elisabet Fernández, more than ten years having elapsed since the beginning of this criminal process and almost five years since the investigative statement of the named in the framework of this file, I have not been able to gather evidence that would lead me to move beyond the state of suspicion of the former President of the Nation."
But the representative of the Public Ministry detailed in his opinion a piece of evidence just arrived at the prosecution: an intertwining of telephone communications between Lázaro Báez and Cristina Kirchner and their main collaborators in the period between October 2010 and April 2013, "which was the period in which the owner of Grupo Austral managed to launder 55 million dollars.
The analysis of the communications ordered by Judge Sebastián Casanello was in charge of the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Complex Crimes and Organized Crime, DAJuDeCO. First, telephones were obtained in the name of the former president and Báez, and "telephones of the private secretaries and main collaborators of the former president were identified," the prosecutor explained.
The result of this analysis was added to the file on May 12 and its conclusion "is further proof of the close relationship between Báez and Cristina Fernández," Marijuan reiterated in his opinion. It is a study of the crossing of calls between 84 subscribers, divided into two groups (the first corresponding to telephones linked to Cristina Fernández, including personal lines and those of her private secretaries and / or collaborators, and the second, corresponding to subscribers attributed to Lázaro Báez), in the period between October 2010 and April 2013, "determined the existence of 372 communications with each other."
The opinion offers another detail: of those communications, four were registered between the lines in the name of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and telephones registered as Lázaro Báez.
There were also 23 communications with Government House lines, one with Residencia de Olivos and the rest with collaborators of Cristina Kirchner.
Punctually, "there were ten communications with lines assigned to Mariano Cabral, 73 with lines assigned to Jorge Isidro Baltazar Bounine and 251 communications with lines assigned to Pablo Erasmo Barreiro". All secretaries of the then president.
The "undeniable link with Lázaro Báez along with whom she is convicted before this federal jurisdiction, by itself does not allow progress in her prosecution and even less in an oral trial" within the framework of the K Money Route, Marijuan said, since she cannot accuse her of having been an instigator, co-author or participant in the money laundering maneuver that earned her a conviction for money laundering.
The dismissal that Marijuan asks for on this occasion about the former president, "in no way moves other procedural situations in pending files," the prosecutor clarified, and said that there are new elements of evidence that "demonstrate a link that goes beyond a relationship of friendship or knowledge between Lázaro Antonio Báez and Cristina Elisabet Fernández."
This statement was based on the visits of Lázaro Báez to Cristina Fernández in the Quinta de Olivos, and the circumstance that "he contacted her by telephone directly or by his private secretaries on more than 300 occasions, are a thorough proof of these aspects that, undoubtedly, must be confronted with other critical events or consummative moments in other investigations."