The investigation into the alleged scams with the debit cards of the Buenos Aires Legislature remained active in the January judicial fair.
It is a process that now has a
double entry
: one seeks to reveal the maneuvers of Julio “Chocolate” Rigau, arrested when
he took money from 48 plastic cards belonging to alleged
Deputies
employees
.
And another, derivative, that emerged in December when it was detected that two other people also extracted money from the salaries of
39 agents of the Buenos Aires Senate
.
At the end of the recess in the Courts, prosecutor
Betina Lacki
called for a testimonial statement from the first group of alleged employees of the Upper House who appear as owners of the plastics from which
a couple of “chocolates”
withdrew money at various ATMs in the center of the capital of Buenos Aires.
The hearings for these alleged employees to provide their testimony under oath to tell the truth (as established by the Code of Criminal Procedure in the Province) are
scheduled for February 27 and 29
.
And for
March 5
.
The first six agents will appear before the prosecutor.
Lacki identified – based on data that he requested from Banco Provincia – 39 people to whom the Senate deposited
700 thousand pesos per month as salaries
.
According to the footage that Bapro also provided, on at least three occasions two people (a man and a woman not yet identified) crossed paths with Rigau – in the middle of the night – in the boxes where ATMs are installed to carry out the same work. than the leader of the PJ arrested for this case:
taking money from those accounts at the beginning of each month.
More progress in the case
Another advance in the process: Lacki informed the authorities of the Chamber of Deputies that
the employees of the Administrative Secretariat of that body will be summoned to testify
.
He tries to determine how the 48 employees who “managed” Chocolate were hired.
Who signed;
in order of whom and to which legislator or legislative block they belonged
.
In other words: the traceability of their arrival and permanence in the provincial parliament.
For this case of alleged
scams that would reach 800 million pesos in Deputies and almost 300 million in a year in Senators,
Rigau – a leader of Sergio Massa's Renovador Front in La Plata – and
Claudio Albini
, former Deputy Chief of Personnel,
are currently
detained.
of the lower house and
Facundo Albini
, councilor elected by UxP on the list that brought
Julio Alak
to the mayor of La Plata.
He was a member of the La Plata deliberative council between 2019 and 2023. He could not assume the second term (on December 10) because he was already in prison.
The Albinis – father and son – are accused of being part of an alleged
illicit association dedicated to defrauding the State with contracts
.
From the opening of Rigau's cell phone it would have been determined that they were the tax collector's bosses.
Or at least to whom Chocolate had to pay part of the money he took out every month.
They were contracts of up to 580 thousand pesos per month.
The defense of these leaders and officials requested that Lacki also summon the current head of Personnel, Pablo Parente, to testify.
That requirement has not yet been made official.
The deputies' authorities
sent the list of the 400 employees
who are part of the permanent staff of the Administrative Secretariat.
They must also declare in the file.
The date is not yet.
It will be, according to the letter that Lacki sent to the House, on a date to be agreed upon based on the prosecutor's agenda.
This agency has – among other functions – the responsibility of “proposing to the president the budget for salaries and expenses of the Chamber.”
Also other tasks related to legislative functioning.
The Senate track
The “Senate trail” of the “Chocolate” case was opened at the end of last year, when Lacki received a hundred hours of security camera footage of that entity's cashiers.
He was able to detect
a gray-haired man and a woman who frequently greeted Rigau
in a friendly manner.
He consulted the extraction records and confirmed that
this couple always took money from 39 accounts
.
They were from the Senate.
They would have withdrawn more than $30 million per month from "ghost employees" of the Buenos Aires Senate.
The judicial process that began on September 9 with the arrest of Rigau, in an ATM at 7 and 54 in La Plata, has three
detainees in preventive detention: Chocolate and the Albini
.
They are housed in a warden in the capital of Buenos Aires.
Lacki maintains that he has the presumption of "the existence of an operation that includes more members, although so far they have not been identified, but that without a doubt allows us to maintain that as the investigation progresses, an act will be detected. of corruption of immeasurable significance".
The Guarantee Judge who intervenes in the file, Guillermo Atencio, also agrees with this description.
The magistrate supported the prosecutor's line of investigation.
In one of the writings he argued that there was evidence to “for now prove that, approximately
since January 2021
and until now, at least three people, the Deputy Director of Personnel of the Chamber of Deputies of the Province of Buenos Aires, His son and someone hired by said institution [Rigau] formed an organization that habitually and permanently, through a tacit or express agreement, had the purpose of repeatedly committing the crime of fraud to the detriment of the public administration.”
With the resumption of full activity in the Provincial Courts,
it is expected that the case will have more movement again
.
The search for the identity of Chocolate's “friends” seen in the filming remains pending.
Until now,
preventive detentions are ratified by the Court of Appeals
.
This implies that the defendants should remain locked in cells until the process ends with a verdict in an oral trial.
Meanwhile, the Legislature remains on pause, after the approval of the tax law and the debt request sent by Axel Kicillof in December.
La Plata (Correspondent)