The civil association Bases Republicanas managed to get the Buenos Aires Federal Court to endorse its criterion: that Cristina Kirchner continues to be investigated in the money laundering case known as the Money Route K. Lázaro Báez, her former business partner was sentenced to 10 years in prison in that case. On Tuesday, chamber members Mariano Llorens and Pablo Bertuzzi revoked the dismissal of the vice president and detailed a series of elements that "cannot be omitted" when "analyzing her role" in the network of laundering operations.
When they were accepted as plaintiffs, the NGO indicated that the file "cannot be analyzed individually but must be framed in the context of the various cases where other facts involving the Báez family and the Kirchner family were investigated, among which the crimes of corruption involving Lázaro Báez and the "Kirchner Group" stand out. whose evidentiary plexus has shown that the named was not the owner of the money obtained illicitly from the coffers of the State, but a mere front man of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner and their family."
This residual section of the K Money Route focused on the link between Cristina and Báez, "to determine and establish their possible co-authorship or participation in that specific and punctual money laundering maneuver."
Even though in May he surprised with the request for the dismissal of the vice president, prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan said that "I have no doubt about the close and direct personal relationship" between the vice president and the owner of Grupo Austral. However, he said that there were not enough elements after a battery of evidence analyzed to maintain the accusation of money laundering against Cristina Kirchner.
Federal Judge Sebastián Casanello ruled along the same lines. The NGO Bases Republicanas insisted on being considered as a plaintiff to reverse that ruling. And the chambermaids of Room II agreed with him this week.
It should be remembered that Lázaro Báez was convicted of laundering 55 million dollars between 2010 and 2013. At the same time, he held several business deals with the former President. In addition, Báez and his entourage made multiple visits to the Olivos presidential residence at that time.
Meanwhile, Austral Construcciones won 86% of the road contracts tendered in Santa Cruz, which, according to what was investigated and condemned in the Vialidad case, were plagued by irregularities: directing the tenders, lack of controls, unfinished works, average overpricing of 65%, exclusive circuits to receive funds for works that were not advancing, among others.
For this reason, Bases Republicanas insisted on linking 75 facts denounced at the time by the Financial Investigation Unit under the leadership of Mariano Federici, which according to the former official were not taken into account by Marijuan to request the dismissal of the vice president. Above all, the 376 telephone calls between them, revealed by the prosecutor himself as a result of an expert report whose conclusions were unknown until then,
The chamber members who ordered the case to be reopened understood the same thing.
A piece of a big puzzle
On the one hand, they indicated that the K Money Route is not an isolated file, but is one more link in a large network of corruption. Then, they pointed out that the work of "addressing the pieces of this puzzle" had to be taken in a conglobating way.
The need to take into account the allegation of prosecutor Diego Luciani in the trial of the Vialidad case, "raised as the generating factor of the illicit money to be laundered" was raised.
Another piece of evidence that the chamber members considered should be taken into consideration as part of the same maneuver is that produced in the "Hotesur and Los Sauces" files, the Kirchner family companies investigated for money laundering, where Lázaro Báez is also involved.
Look at the whole circuit
From all this panorama, the two chamber members of the Federal Cassation understood, it is concluded that if, according to the judicial investigations, Lázaro Báez "was in charge of providing the corporate framework to capture public funds ("Vialidad Nacional" case), of partially conveying them into the private hands of those who were then public officials ("Los Sauces" and "Hotesur" cases) and also of taking funds out of the country to later reintroduce them in order to hide their origin (in in this case, known as "the Money Route"), suspicion is configured" about the vice president's involvement.
That possible action "of Cristina Fernández is in these latest facts, as it is possible to understand her link with, at least, part of those funds."
Analyze the degree of CFK's involvement
For Llorens and Bertuzzi, "the different degrees of criminal participation" of the vice president must be specifically studied, "to determine the elements of evidence that place each of those responsible on the rung of responsibility that corresponds to them." They believe that Marijuan "limited herself only to linking Cristina Kirchner to Lázaro Baez" but "without specifying the role that would have fallen to each one throughout the development of the iter criminis and not only in the face of visible externalizations."
Evidence from other cases
With the understanding that we are under "a conglobant case," Mariano Llorens added in his vote that the evidence added in other files should be evaluated.
"These are public evidence and can be requested easily and quickly, to complete the clarification of the facts of this case," he said. And he pointed to the material and testimonies collected in the Vialidad, Hotesur and Los Sauces cases, and another case for money laundering where the financier K Ernesto Clarens was investigated.
All these cases must be analyzed, said the chamber members, "to demonstrate – or rule out – the existence of a group connected and directed to the commission of different crimes, such as the objectives of a criminal enterprise, described with the typology of Organized Crime." Translation: an unlawful association.
The oft-repeated concept of "conglomerating the analysis of the evidence," the judges said, "does not only mean gathering it materially, but also making a true evaluation that allows the objective of reaching the real truth to be realized."
The Testament of Lázaro Báez
That document, signed in 2010 by the Patagonian contractor, was seized in the raids within the framework of the K Money Route. There, Báez provided that, in the event of his death, his children would not be able to take control of all his assets and businesses until 30 years after the date of his death.
The chamber members pointed out that this document "must be analyzed together with all the deeds seized at the headquarters of Ricardo Albornoz's notary office in Río Gallegos and those granted that are recorded in the protocol records that that notarial headquarters must register and keep in the College of Notaries to whom it depends."
Lázaro Báez acquired 1,420 real estate properties, and in another file also in charge of prosecutor Marijuan, it is sought to determine whether he acted as a loan shark for Cristina Kirchner.
The Confessions of the Repentant
Finally, the judges said that in the investigation they should "have in view and compare the documentary evidence" of this case with the statements ofaccused collaborators in the file known as the Notebooks of Bribes.
They referred to the confessions of José López, Víctor Manzanares, Ernesto Clarens, Juan Manuel Campillo and Claudio Uberti, "with broad participation of all parties, which could serve to explain and clarify the facts, it is a measure that could shed light on the structure that we are analyzing here."
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The Anti-Corruption Office will once again be a plaintiff in some criminal cases
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