An attempt to quash the case against Cristina Kirchner and businessmen for corruption notebooks failed

The Federal Chamber on Monday rejected an action for annulment which had favored the defense of the businessman Armando Loson in the mega-cause of the “books”, based on some 1,600 irregularities that had been detected in the annotators attributed to the taxi driver Oscar Centeno, indicated at GlobeLiveMedia judicial sources.

The decision of Loson, representative of the Albanesi group, was intended to undo everything that had been done against him, but indirectly – if successful – it would have had an impact on the file which sought to know whether the vice-president Cristina Kirchner ran an illegal association dedicated to collecting bribes among businessmen who have done business with the state, a case in which Argentina’s leading businessmen have been brought to justice.

What judges Leopoldo Bruglia and Pablo Bertuzzi have done today is ratify the decision of judge Julián Ercolini on the proposal formulated by Loson. Specifically, his defense requested the annulment of “everything that has been done in this trial in relation to his assistance”, based on an expertise carried out by order of judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi in another case.

In this study, it was ensured that there was no other handsdifferent from that of Centeno, which made corrections, overprints, essays and erasures. Who made them is unclear. But, according to Loson, “the cause was invented for him to stay with one of Latin America’s largest private energy companies,” his spokespeople said.

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For Loson, the expertise ordered by Martínez de Giorgi “would imply the nullity of the content recorded in the” notebooks “written by Oscar Centeno and the testimony of the plaintiff, the journalist of The nation Diego Cabot, as well as subsequent pleadings”. That is to say: the whole cause, underlined the sources consulted by Infobase.

Without yet knowing when it will be done, the Federal Oral Tribunal 7 has already begun to prepare the oral trial of the mega-case of the “notebooksThe defendants prefer to say “photocopies”. At the end of 2022, the judges of the Court decided to open a file where they presented the evidence requested by each party for the future oral trial in file 9608, Centeno chapter. The prosecution’s writings, the complaint and the parties had been delivered some time ago, but the parties were blind to what their spouses in the case were claiming.

As revealed GlobeLiveMedia at that time, the prosecutor Fabienne Leon, head of the public prosecutor’s office; and the vice president Cristina Kirchner, accused of being the head of an illegal association, they asked for the telephone numbers of the former public works secretary Jose Lopez, kidnapped for illicit enrichment. They were a showpiece for the prosecutor Diego Luciani in the trial in which the former head of state ended up being sentenced on December 6.

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Although Loson’s statement is made in the statement, the possibility of opening the door to challenge the validity of the notebooks would have immediate repercussions. “It is not lost on the court that the defense request sought the declaration of nullity of the annotations referring to Loson as a whole and not only of the fragments (words) which were allegedly altered,” the chamber judgment said. I of the Federal Chamber to which he adhered GlobeLiveMedia– However, said solution presupposes that the incorporation of the evidence would have violated the procedural provisions, against the guarantees of the defendant, which does not appear from the file.

For the Federal Chamber, “the questions formulated must necessarily be redirected towards the discussion of the probative value or the probative force of these elements. More specifically, it is in this last aspect that the defense allegations could have implications. Which refers, ultimately, to the domain of oral and public debate, where the contradictory fully reigns and where the evidence is abundant.

The ruling also pointed out that “the content recorded in the ‘notebooks’ (eight copies in total, ranging from 2005 to 2010 and from 2013 to 2015) was timely ratified by oscar rye (who served as the driver of Roberto Barata, former Coordinating Undersecretary of the Federal Planning Department) in his statement framed in the Regime of Law No. 27,304, where he provided details of the transaction described. And that the case has already been judged and is currently going through the preparatory phase of the debate (before TOCF n°7)”.

The Federal Chamber insisted that It will be in the oral debate where Centeno “may possibly answer the questions put to him and the party may also make full use of all evidence and defenses it brings to its claims. There should “be a conducive environment to reformulate issues that are already overcome in the tentative nature of this procedural step.”

With regard to the irregularities detected in the notebooks, the decision added: “it cannot be ignored that the specialized study and the testimony invoked by the appellant come from another investigation, where -so far- it has not There is no judicial decision that has weighed them in. And in this sense it can be seen that – contrary to the precedents mentioned on the rule of exclusion – in the present case, the details of the circumstances indicated are not clear – “when and in what context they would have occurred, who or whom they would have intervened, etc. – but they are currently the subject of investigation in this summary”.

In another incident, The Federal Chamber ordered that this instruction remain in the hands of Judge Martínez de Giorgi. Tax Carlos Stornelli, promoter of the cause of the notebooks, he asked that the investigation of the irregularities in the notebooks be sent to the Federal Court 11, in charge of Ercolini, since he understood that they had to be studied in this mega-file. Judges Bruglia and Bertuzzi rejected the request and declared that it is “conducive that a foreign magistrate to the appreciation of this evidence denounced as irregular is the one who leads the investigation”.

“It should also be added that the backlog of recently initiated proceedings could lead to a serious delay in the processing of these proceedings, which are at the final stage of the investigation in respect of the majority of the accused who do not have not yet been brought up at trial,” the Federal Chamber added.

Loson, precisely, is one of the businessmen who had initially been prosecuted and whose situation is pending in the investigation. His defense demanded that his case be referred, as was the case for other businessmen, to electoral justice, because by declaring himself an accused collaborator and acknowledging the payments, he ensured that his contributions were intended for the campaigns of the Kirchberism.

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