Who is Judge Walter Bento, the judge suspended for corruption who will go to impeachment

The federal judge and with electoral competence of Mendoza Walter Bento (56) is a fervent Catholic, fan of Boca and collector of owls. In his office in the federal courts of the Mendoza capital he has a collection of sculptures of these nocturnal animals of different sizes and materials.

Bento shares the same passion for collecting owls with whom she has been pointed out several times as her godmother in the judicial career, Judge María Romilda Servini.

This Wednesday he was suspended in his functions as a magistrate and the process of impeachment was initiated for poor performance of his duties. The decision was taken unanimously by the Council of the Magistracy. Only the counselor and judge Alberto Lugones presented a dissent, but he supported the dismissal.

In the Federal Justice he is prosecuted for bribes, laundering, illicit association and illicit enrichment. And he has a request for preventive detention.

Bento was appointed to Federal Court 1 in 2005 during the government of Néstor Kirchner and with the wink of the historic operator of Peronism Mendozaor Juan Carlos "Chueco" Mazzón, then right hand of José Luis Manzano.

In 2011 he made a resounding raid with the Gendarmerie in Cablevisión, in the middle of the conflict of Kirchnerism with Clarín. At the request of the Vila-Manzano group, the Buenos Aires cable operator intervened, as if it were its jurisdiction. The Court ruled the proceedings null and void and questioned Bento's actions. The judge was denounced before the Council of the Magistracy and, in 2012, the request for impeachment was dismissed and Bento saved by the Kirchner majority.

Bento rarely gave interviews, most of them related to his work as an electoral judge in Mendoza. He has had a good relationship with the Peronist and radical governments that have alternated public management in the 16 years he has been a magistrate.

Also with the most powerful businessmen of Mendoza, in multiple cases that he has had to resolve, when he came to be in charge of two courts, subrogating other vacant courts, and as an electoral judge. For many years he has been the all-powerful of the causes of drug trafficking, smuggling and against humanity in Mendoza.

But the one who begins to investigate him for corruption, Attorney General Dante Vega, is also of Peronist extraction and his career is linked to magistrates K who make up legitimate justice. Bento himself in his defense of the cause in which he has been prosecuted for illicit association, bribery, money laundering and enrichment has said that Vega hates him and that he is his enemy.

The judge's wife, Marta Boiza, and their sons Nahuel Bento and Luciano Bento are all employees of the Federal Justice. Together they exceed $1.8 million pesos a month in public salaries.

One of the raids in the framework of the case where they investigate Judge Walter Bento.

The prosecutor assures that the family's wealth, with several properties, luxury cars and lifestyle – several trips a year to Las Vegas, Miami and other destinations abroad – do not match their declared income.

The Bento couple registers 9 properties in their name, most of them in private neighborhoods in the most expensive areas of Greater Mendoza. In the detail of the cars that the judge's family had, they appear: a Volkswagen Amarok truck, an Audi truck valued at more than 4.3 million pesos, in the name of his disabled son that the members of the family had a license to drive; and two other Audi vehicles that exceed one and a half million pesos.

The investigation that shocks the federal courts of Mendoza began to be instructed in March 2020, based on two specific facts: the data that appeared on the phone of the detainee Walter Bardinella Donoso, accused of drug trafficking, and the statements of Diego Barrera, the main defendant for the kidnapping and murder of businessman and customs broker Diego Aliaga, neighbor of the judge and who made negotiations on behalf of Bento.

The Prosecutor's Office maintains that the lawyers met with Aliaga or spoke permanently with this lobbyist, "who gave them instructions under the direction of the judge," whom they describe in the investigation as "the leader of the gang and the number 1" of the criminal organization.

One of the pieces of evidence that most compromises the judge is the Aliaga relationship. According to the indictment, there were 265 calls, in a span of 8 months, between the former dispatcher and a phone that was scheduled with the name "cousin." When the Attorney General's Office verified who owned that phone number, they discovered that it was Bento's official phone. Until now. the judge has refused to hand over his iPhone 12 Pro phone because, according to his lawyer Mariano Cúneo Libarona, "no one is obliged to provide evidence against him."

In spite of everything, the investigators were able to rescue something: desperate calls for help from Bento appeared to figures in power and promises of support. They are messages prior to the raid on your home. There are chats with Mario Adaro, judge of the Court of Mendoza and former minister of the Peronist governor Jaque, and with Alejandro Gule, the Attorney General of the province. With the two they speak disparagingly of journalists who report on the case and reveal that the judge can be saved by Senator Anabel Fernández Sagasti, an intimate of Cristina Kirchner. There is another chat with Alberto Lugones, the vice president of the Magistracy, who tries to "brother" Bento.