The Federal Court of Criminal Cassation rejected a proposal by Cristina Kirchner with which she intended to annul the decision of the previous instance, which ordered that
she continue to be investigated in the case known as the Money Route K.
With this resolution the criterion was firm. which determined that the investigation against him for the
alleged crime of money laundering should continue.
At the end of 2023, the Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires revoked the dismissal that Cristina had obtained in Ruta del Dinero K, when Judge Sebastián Casanello granted a request from prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan, who maintained that there was no evidence for the former president remains under investigation.
The camaristas understood that this was not the case and heeded the arguments of the civil association Bases Republicanas which, after becoming a plaintiff, maintained that the former president should be investigated in this case where her
former business partner, Lázaro Báez, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
At that time, the judges detailed a series of elements that “cannot be omitted” when “analyzing their role” in the network of money laundering operations.
The former vice president opposed this decision and went to the highest criminal court, that is, to the Chamber of Cassation, which this Monday rejected his arguments and endorsed what had already been said in the previous instance: he will continue under investigation suspected of having
had a degree of participation in the structure that allowed Báez to launder 55 million dollars
.
An "inappropriate" proposition!
The judges of Chamber IV of the Cassation,
Javier Carbajo and Gustavo Hornos
, understood that the claim of Cristina Kirchner's defense did not correspond, since "
it is inadmissible inasmuch as the decisions
" that are being questioned.
In these cases the criterion applied is always the same: it is not a final sentence, with which the two chamber members,
with the dissenting vote of Mariano Borinsky,
maintained that
it was not appropriate to grant the appeal formulated
by the defense and therefore, it was not appropriate. will be analyzed.
When arguing the majority's opinion, the chamber members pointed out: “Nor is it noted, nor was the appellant able to demonstrate, that the questioned resolution causes the challenger a grievance of late or impossible subsequent reparation.”
With this decision, the case under investigation will continue to have her
accused of the crime of money laundering
.
The case is in the hands of Judge Casanello and the discussion focuses on which prosecutor will intervene, since the Public Ministry is responsible for promoting the criminal action and in this file Guillermo Marijuan said that there were no longer elements to continue with the case.
This residual section of Money Route K focused on the link between Cristina and Báez, "
to determine and establish their possible co-authorship or participation in that specific and specific money laundering maneuver
. "
In May of last year, despite the then vice president's request for dismissal, prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan stated that "I have no doubt about the close and direct personal relationship" between the vice president and the owner of Grupo Austral.
However, he expressed that after a battery of tested measures analyzed,
there were not enough elements to maintain the accusation
of money laundering against Cristina Kirchner.
Under that same line of argument, federal judge Sebastián Casanello ruled.
The NGO Republican Bases insisted on being considered as a plaintiff to reverse this ruling.
And the chambermaids of Room II agreed with him last November.
Since then the case was reopened, but Cristina Kirchner
played one more card to prevent this from happening and she went to the Cassation.
It must be remembered that Lázaro Báez was convicted of laundering 55 million dollars between 2010 and 2013. At the same time, he entered into 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 Roads case, were plagued by irregularities: direction of the tenders, lack of controls, unfinished works, average price premiums of 65 %, exclusive circuits to receive funds for works that were not progressing, among others.
For this reason, Republican Bases insisted on linking 75 events reported 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.
Under these criteria, the Buenos Aires federal Chamber ordered the reopening of the investigation against Cristina Kirchner and now the Cassation, with the signature of Hornos and Carbajo, endorsed that position by rejecting the former vice president's complaint.
When the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber rejected the arguments of prosecutor Marijuan, they pointed out that he “limited himself only to relating Cristina Kirchner to Lázaro Baez” but “without specifying the role that would have been played by each one during the entire development of the iter criminis and not only in the face of visible externalizations.