It will not be seen for now, as occurred in other embezzlements discovered, the image of the camera taking the pointer while extracting bills from ATMs with a pack of debit cards.
Although there were also Julio "Chocolate" Rigau
-style extractions
, the investigation was strengthened by
the money movements that were made online
, systematic, unscrupulous: multiple transfers, deposits, payments for personal services, purchase of dollars and even investments.
Part of the money from the scam was reinvested.
The mechanics of the
corruption cases in the Buenos Aires Senate
are the same as those of the last ones detected.
The difference now lies in the fact that for the first time we have the names and surnames of those who are
criminally accused and charged with being in charge of the million-dollar maneuver: a Buenos Aires senator from Together for Change
, second term, and two of her advisors.
As "co-authors", they are accused of the crime of "defraudation against the public administration."
This is
Flavia Delmonte
, a provincial senator from the Costa Party, tour guide, tennis teacher, radical, councilor in 2015, elected senator in 2017 and re-elected in 2021, and
her advisor Kevin Alan Razimoff
and the Chamber employee of Buenos Aires Deputies Gonzalo Javier Torrijo Fuertes.
According to the accusation,
they registered gnocchi in the Senate and kept a large part of what they were assigned as salary
.
There are half a dozen proven cases for Justice.
The investigation was launched two and a half years ago when one of these people reported the maneuver.
A judge now requested the senator's removal
, while the Justice moved forward with the accusations until requesting the
investigations
that were going to take place Monday and Tuesday of this week, but the defense lawyers of the accused asked for time to be able to see the case and
they were postponed. .
In the call for investigation, prosecutor Mario Rafael Pérez, from UFIJ 4 of Dolores, specialized in Crimes of Corruption of Officials, maintained that "without being able to specify the exact date, but between the months of February 2019 and at least until December 2020", provincial senator Flavia Delmonte, jointly and coordinated with her advisor Kevin Alan Razimoff and with the employee of the Chamber of Deputies of the Province Gonzalo Javier Torrijo Fuertes, "deployed maneuvers aimed at harming the Provincial Public Administration, consisting of to
incorporate as administrative employees into the Provincial Senate people who were not fulfilling their duties", to gnocchi
.
One of these alleged Senate employees, Tamara Yanina Arce, was the one who made the complaint in mid-2021.
Later, when investigating the accounts, the prosecutor detected five other cases.
Among them there is a senior master builder from Mar del Tuyú, a merchant from Pinamar, a neighbor from Punta Lara, a lawyer from Mar de Ajó and another legislator, in this case, a councilor from Mar del Plata: she is Marianela Romero, president of the UCR block.
The five were summoned to give an "informative" statement.
These people, Pérez accuses, "were
designated in exchange for resigning part of their assets
in favor of the last two mentioned, making or allowing money transfers to be made in favor of those, who in this way obtained an undue financial benefit, with detriment to the coffers of the Public Administration of the Province of Buenos Aires".
With the evidence collected by the prosecution, the Guarantees Judge of Villa Gesell, David Mancinelli, who these days substitutes Judge Diego Olivera Zapiola, of the Guarantees Court 4 of Dolores, endorsed the investigation and
formally requested the removal of Senator Delmonte's immunity.
to the Chamber of Senators of the Buenos Aires Legislature.
"How can the fiscal agent require that the proceedings be brought to trial and establish a degree of certainty if the lines of investigation are limited by the indemnity enjoyed by a legislator?" asks Mancinelli.
Thus, he maintains that if
there are sufficient elements to summon the legislator for an investigation, the admissibility of the request, the violation of immunity, corresponds
.
The case was referred to the Legislature.
"Chocolate" mechanism in online mode
"It is proven that it was operated
from the IP of the terminals of the senator and her advisor Razimoff
, there is a lot of evidence in the file, for example from which accounts and to which the money was transferred, what they paid with that money - house taxes of Delmonte's parents, the license plate of their car, and
every time they bought the quota of two hundred dollars in the name of gnocchi
. Then, also, in which platforms they invested, such as Invertir Online and BTC Trade SRL," he explains to
Clarín
the lawyer Rodrigo Bonzo, who represents Yanina Arce.
In his writing, the prosecutor cites banking information "laboriously" collected, and in that search he found a valuable pearl for the file: he reveals that on a certain day in May 2020, transfers were made from Arce's account to Razimoff
from home banking. whose user was "flaviadelmonte2015"
using, among other IPs, one that corresponds to the Chamber of Senators.
Pérez believes that the person who operated the account "prima facie" was the legislator's advisor.
"I'm not gnocchi": the testimony of the complainant
"I am not gnocchi or repentant," the complainant Arce told
Clarín
, and she says that in April 2019 it was Delmonte who proposed that she work at a Neighborhood Care Center and get paid as an employee of the Senate.
"She told me that it was going to be 31 thousand pesos, of which I would receive 10 thousand plus the social work, which was what interested me."
With five children, Arce was unemployed at the time.
Three months later the woman fell ill - from a serious illness that she had already overcome - so she told Delmonte that she needed the pay stubs to present to IOMA, the social work, "but she never gave them to me."
So she herself went to look for them at the Buenos Aires Senate.
She reached the treasury, where they called the senator: "She made a fuss about me for having gone and gave the order not to give me anything. I asked her to unsubscribe and she told me that she had done so, but she didn't. ".
"One day they called me from Banco Provincia and I found out that they were going to take out a loan of 270 thousand pesos in 72 installments. Not me, they from home banking. Because they had not canceled the account, they continued collecting, and with salary tripled. In those days my son had been denied the IFE in the ANSES for the amount that I charged, and I did not charge anything. I did not understand. I investigated, I asked for an account summary at the bank, and there was the account and what what they did, and I reported them," says Arce.
There is no date determined for the investigation.
Lawyer Bonzo will ask that it be before March 22, or that, failing that, Kevin Razimoff be prohibited from leaving the country, who at dawn of that day plans to board LATAM flight LA472 which, after a stopover in Chile , will take you to Madrid.
The lawyer's predicament lies in a presumption that is not unfounded:
Razimoff does not have privileges like his boss, and once he testifies he could be arrested.