Martín Báez, the eldest son of businessman K, obtained his release under the terms of probation since his conviction for money laundering is not firm.
The Federal Oral Court 4 (TOF 4) that sentenced him to eight years in prison, in the K Money Route, signed his release. The minority shareholder of Austral Construcciones has been deprived of his liberty since February 7, 2019 and was under house arrest in the city of Río Gallegos.
Martín Báez reached four years and four months since his arrest "serving two-thirds of the sentence against him," said the judges of TOF 4. In February of this year, the Court of Cassation confirmed the convictions in the K Money Route, leaving Martín Báez's sentence at six and a half years.
The judges took into account the time spent in pretrial detention, the confirmation in the second instance of the conviction and the conclusion of the Psychosocial Team of the Assistance Program for Persons Under Electronic Surveillance. The report maintains that Martín Báez was "committed and responsibly exercising those actions to sustain his house arrest, positively evaluating the course of his arrest."
This cleared any risk of flight that could represent the son of Lázaro Báez, remembering that the family was seized and weighs on them a request for confiscation of their assets.
The defense lawyer, in his request for release, said that on June 7 of this year "he was going to be in the term of serving his conditional release, since he would serve two thirds of the sentence imposed of 6 years and 6 months in prison for the act for which he was convicted."
The situation was evaluated by the members of the Tribunal when granting the release.
With the time served as stipulated in the Criminal Procedure Code, judges Néstor Costabel and Jorge Gorini, understood that the release (under the terms of probation) but with the application of the electronic ankle bracelet.
"The obligation of subjection to the process by Martín Báez continues in force, while his conviction is not firm and eventually, his execution stage remains," since there are two trials linked to the money laundering operations in which Martín is prosecuted.
For this reason, the magistrates understood that he must "maintain his submission to the care of the electronic surveillance program through the GPS electronic monitoring device with a radius of 100 km around his home."
Also, Martín Báez must inform the Court, immediately, "any modification of his place of residence, as well as any circumstance by virtue of which he must be absent for more than 24 hours from it."
When Martín Báez was arrested in February 2019, the Justice maintained that then, he had the ability to "transfer and / or operate with funds that could result in the benefit of the crime under investigation." The prosecutor's office in charge of Abel Córdoba had detected movement of money between accounts located in Panama when a precautionary measure was in force on the son of Lázaro Báez.
Those funds were part of the case known as the K Money Route. As determined in this file, the former business partner of the vice was the essential and indisputable link of a structure that for three years (2010-2013) laundered 55 million dollars. Nothing could have materialized without Austral Construcciones, Báez's flagship firm that began its activity in May 2003, when Néstor Kirchner arrived at the Casa Rosada. The funds that came from the public road works that systematically won, were partly poured into laundering operations, as condemned by TOF 4.
When weighing the use of Austral Construcciones and the air taxi firm Top Air, the Court of Cassation confirmed the seizure of both companies for an amount equivalent to 330 million dollars. In addition, the confiscation of assets worth the equivalent of $65 million from individuals was confirmed.
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