After a year of hearings, it was expected that the former federal judge of Corrientes Carlos Soto Dávila (74) would know this Friday his fate in the oral debate in which he is judged for collecting handouts, in a systematic way, paid by drug banks, to guarantee them impunity. But at the last minute the federal court prolonged the suspense: the sentence will be announced next Monday 12 at noon.
The debate, which stems from the "Operation Sapucay" against drug trafficking in Itatí, concluded with the "last words" of the accused, including Juan Manuel Faraone, former mayor of the town of Empedrado, and lawyers Gregorio Giménez and Tomás Viglione.
Previously, Soto Dávila himself, his former secretaries Pablo Molina (51) and Federico Grau (59) made use of the right to express themselves for the last time before the magistrates; and lawyer Duylio Barboza Galeano (50).
In his defense, the former magistrate ratified his innocence by pointing out that he was "in each and every one of the hearings" of the debate and did not hear "a single employee of the court who questioned" his actions, alluding to the organizing figure of an illicit association allegedly dedicated to committing acts of bribery.
He also questioned one of the drug traffickers – and accused – who presented himself as repentant, Federico "Morenita" Marín (33), regarding whom he said that, "despite the fact that they built a silver bridge for him, he escaped."
He also criticized that in the pleadings the prosecutors compared his case with that of the former federal judge of Oran, Raúl Reynoso, and in that sense clarified that all his assets were bought before being appointed as a magistrate.
"This case was a deliberate intervention" in the jurisdiction of Correa by the Federal Court 12 of Buenos Aires, at the time in charge of Sergio Torres, who instructed and raised this file to trial, accompanied by "media pressure," he said.
"What they did with this cause is ruin my life, they really ruined my life based on nothing, I never thought it would happen to me to practice the profession," said Viglione, who worked in Gimenez's studio.
Likewise, Faraone maintained his innocence by indicating that he did not hold a meeting with Soto Dávila to mediate procedural relief in the drug trafficking cases that complicated "Morenita" Marín, who has been a fugitive since last February.
Former Oran federal judge Raul Reynoso. Photo Telam
The request for punishment
For their part, prosecutors Diego Iglesias and Martín Uriona, of the Attorney General's Office for Narcocriminality (Procunar) and the federal prosecutor of Corrientes Carlos Schaefer, asked that Soto Dávila be sentenced to 15 years in prison, his secretaries Pablo Molina and Federico Grau, to 12 and 9 years and six months, respectively.
They also required absolute and special perpetual disqualification and the payment of fines of 75,000, 65,000 and 50,000 pesos, respectively.
And they requested that the lawyers Galeano, Giménez and Viglione be sentenced to 8, 7 and 5 years in prison respectively, while for Faraone they asked for 2 years and 5 months of effective prison.
In this case, lawyers Jorge Vallejos and Omar Serial, as well as marijuana smugglers Carlos "Cachito" Bareiro (42), "Morenita" Marín and Pablo Torres, reached plea agreements in abbreviated trials.
Carlos "Cachito" Bareiro, convicted of drug trafficking.
The Itatí case
During the prosecutor's argument, it was maintained that the defendants were part of "an illicit association whose main purpose was to provide judicial cover for the development of the activities of the narco-criminal organization led by Federico Sebastián Marín and Carlos Bareiro."
So far, in the different stages of the Itatí mega-case, there have been 116 convictions. They were dictated in four different oral trials and many of them were under the figure of abbreviated trial. Prosecutors estimate that the organization moved at least 18 tons of Paraguayan marijuana.
"That connivance of the then federal judge Soto Dávila and his two secretaries, Grau and Molina, consisted of avoiding advancing in the investigations under his charge linked to operations of that criminal organization in such a way as not to judicially compromise its leaders (Marín and Bareiro), as well as improving the procedural situation of those members who, due to the preventive actions of the security agencies, were arrested. granting freedoms contrary to law," the Prosecutor's Office said from minute one.
The prosecutors argued before the Federal Criminal Court of Corrientes, composed of a combination of magistrates from other provinces.
So many judges excused themselves from intervening in a process against Soto Dávila that the court was composed of a countryman from each town: Juan Manuel Iglesias (Chaco), Rubén David Oscar Quiñones (Formosa) and Manuel Alberto Jesús Moreira (Misiones).
To make clear the seriousness of what was discussed in this trial, the prosecutors closed with a reflection: "You can not fight drug trafficking if we do not end and fight corruption, even less if that corruption is entrenched in the Judiciary that must punish criminal behaviors that put people's health and safety at risk."
EMJ
