The key that prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan decided to use ten years ago opened the door through which Cristina Kirchner emerged unscathed from one of the most famous corruption cases on Monday, although not the most serious or the one with the most evidence against her. After the controversial opinion of the prosecutor and the immediate reply of the two public plaintiff agencies -with brain death regarding the cases in which officials of the current government are involved-, the last shovel of dirt that Judge Casanello threw this Monday dissociated the vice president from the file known as the K Money Route.
The outcome was foreseeable and announced since Marijuan requested the dismissal of Cristina: if the accuser does not accuse, the judge only has to endorse that photograph with his signature. But the whole sequence offers scraps to save.
The first, and most eloquent, is Marijuan's turn regarding his persevering accusation of the vice president during the ten years that this file has, whose first and main section ended with the conviction of Báez and his gang of accomplices. Ten years in prison for him – after the Federal Cassation lowered the original sentence of twelve years attributed in the oral trial by the TOF 4 – six and a half years and three for his sons, six and five for his accountant and his lawyer, for example. In the ocean of impunity in which Argentina has historically been shipwrecked, those sentences are very high.
And they were made possible by the excellent work of Marijuan and Casanello during the investigation, following the trail of the millions of dollars that went to tax havens in Switzerland and the Caribbean, and then re-entered the country to launder themselves in the patrimony of Báez. Only from Baez? That is the key question that at least in the framework of this dossier will be blowing in the wind, as Bob Dylan would sing.
Let's go back to Cristina Kirchner's cluttered judicial map. After being accused in the K Money Route as a possible participant in the maneuvers of her partner, client, friend and confidant inherited from her husband, the vice president was denounced and investigated along with Lázaro Báez in other files: Vialidad -where both ended up convicted in December for a mega fraud to the State through manganetas with the public road work of Santa Cruz-, Hotesur and Los Sauces – whose accusation reflects the alleged "return" of fortunes by Báez and Cristóbal López to Cristina, through the trick rents of hotels and apartments – and, only her, the colossal system of collection of bribes registered in the Cuadernos de las Coimas.
That is to say that the suspicions of Cristina's participation in the circuit investigated in the K Money Route were more than credible. Not a single penny entered the pockets of Lázaro Báez that did not come from the public contracts that his partners Néstor and Cristina Kirchner gave him repeatedly.
In Vialidad it was found that much of that money never ended up in the cement that had to be dumped on the roads of Santa Cruz. And in Hotesur/Los Sauces, a good portion of that cake ended up in those two ghost companies of the Kirchner family. Why would the $55 million that Lazarus laundered between 2010 and 2015 have had a different outcome?
One possibility: that before the sudden death of his friend, the contractor tried to hide from the widow part of the loot that according to what was agreed with Nestor corresponded to him, and therefore the haste the botched to make the dollars disappear from the country, with the help of the extravagant financiers Fariña and Federico Elaskar.
But that theory was also not proven by anyone on the record. And this is key. On the other hand, the latest measures to which the prosecutor Marijuan was waiting subordinated his opinion before the repeated attacks of the lawyers of the vice president to be dismissed, showed a very suggestive result and diametrically opposed to the decision that the accuser ended up taking.
It is that last week, in the middle of the text with which the prosecutor admitted the alleged lack of evidence with which he justified the request for dismissal of Cristina, the whole country had breakfast with the fact that the judicial listening agency that depends on the Court had discovered 372 communications between Báez and Cristina or their secretaries and relatives. In the period that was under the magnifying glass: 2010 to 2013. Not all, two visits by Lázaro to the Quinta de Olivos were also verified, coinciding with the dates on which Fariña had indicated that both talked about Baez's silver -supposedly- that left the country.
Passing in clean: the tests whose result was expected increased the suspicions that existed before asking for them. But the prosecutor chose to ignore them and ask for a quick dismissal. Things of justice.
A year ago, in April 2022, Cristina had asked for the umpteenth time to be dismissed. Marijuan refused, and Casanello agreed with him, recalling that "the totality of the proceedings proposed by the prosecutor in his opinion of October 21, 2021 was ordered. Its results were gradually incorporated into these proceedings, with telephone cross-referencing in the preparatory process and exchanges between countries concerning the request for international assistance."
He added: "I do not consider it right, as director of the criminal process, to mutilate open avenues of investigation. If at the time they were considered useful and relevant, there is no valid reason to review today - by the mere passage of time - that criterion. Therefore, I will insist and wait for your results."
The results came, but they were used to shut down the investigation rather than deepen it. As the remembered maestro Julio Blanck would say in his Sunday columns of Clarín: Sugar or saccharin?
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With an extreme move, the former head of the UIF seeks to prevent Cristina Kirchner from being dismissed in the K Money Route
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