Road concessions: They revoked the charges against a former Macrista official and ordered new measures

The Federal Chamber has revoked the charges and ordered the lack of merit of the former director of the roads of the macrismo Javier Iguacel, in a case which hears a case in which he is accused of having favored a group of companies by improperly extending the concession of seven road corridors which crosses eleven provinces. The judge Sebastien Casanello he had sued him for matters incompatible with public office. But Chamber 1 of the court overturned that decision, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to justify a benefit to companies and a connection to former officials. He urged to redirect and deepen the investigation in search of these alleged contacts.

“The elements examined are insufficient to support the objective of unfairly benefiting the concessionaires and therefore of linking the various administrative acts in the same criminal act,” said the judgment to which he subscribed. Infobase. “For now, there are not enough elements to link the former officials incriminated to the concession companies or their representatives, and thus support the hypothesis for which they were prosecuted.

The companies involved in these extensions were the main public works ones: PAOLINI HNOS SA, VIAL AGRO SA, INC SpA, CCA CIVIL PANAMÁ SA, GREEN SA, JOSÉ CARTELLONE CONSTRUCCIONES CIVILES SA, HELPORT SA, PANEDILE ARGENTINA SACIF, SA DE OBRAS Y SERVICIOS COPASA, ELEPRINT SA, ROVELLA CARRANZA SA, JCR SA and MOTA ENGIL LATIN AMERICA BV.

According to the judgment, beyond the measures that the judge deems relevant, “The search for contacts between the defendants and the contracting companies – communications and telephone messages, e-mails, minutes and/or documents of hearings or meetings, etc. – that can shed light on the related question is noted as useful to the investigation.) the alleged misuse of administrative will for the benefit of those”.

The case began in August 2019 following a complaint filed by the Union of Road and Assimilated Workers of the Argentine Republic, according to which “based on certain acts of officials of the National Administration of Roads and of the Nation’s Department of Transportation, the terms of the National Highway Corridors Nos. 1 through 6 and 8 concession contracts were allegedly unlawfully and improperly extended. but also harmed the national public administration by depriving it of the possibility of obtaining, with a new offer, better contractual conditions”.

Last July, Federal Judge Sebastián Casanello ordered the mayor to prosecute Capitan Sarmiento with the former head of the highway’s legal services Ricardo Stoddartand the former executive director of Occovi, Pablo Belenky.

According to Casanello, iguacel took an interest in Concession contracts analyzed with a view to benefiting concession companies, acting in a manner contrary to that provided by law”. According to him, the concession contracts have been extended outside the stipulated normative frameworkbecause the extension by decree planned by the motorway In contradiction with the law on public works. The sections of Road Corridors 7 to 3 have been awarded, extended the concessions of Road Corridors 1 to 6 and 8 extra-contractually, and validated the tender procedure for Public-Private Participation contracts.

Although it had been published a few days before, the news of the prosecution was published when the arguments of the oral trial against Cristina Kirchner in the Highway case, he denounces that Iguacel promoted at the beginning of his administration. “Just today I was sued for a complaint from the Secretary of the Highway Union regarding the process of bidding highways through PPP. Again, we will appeal with evidence and witnesses. We will continue to fight for the truth, hoping for justice. We are not all the same,” the former official said at the time.

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His defense appealed. He said that Casanello “built the incrimination on arbitrary assessments on administrative regulations”, that at the time of taking over “the concessions were about to be completed -21/04/2016-, for which the agreed annual extension has been made effective”, and declared that “the disqualifications related to the awarding of the PPP they were inconsistent and that there was no favouritism ”According to the defenses, everything materialized following the panorama they found in the DNV during the taking of direction, the obstacles that limited the speed of the auction, and the principles of necessity and urgency to protect the general benefit.

The judges Leopoldo Bruglia, Pablo Bertuzzi and Mariano Llorens they studied the proposals and the first thing they looked at was the chosen criminal figure, article 265 of the Penal Code, which sanctions “the public official who, directly, through an intermediary or a simulated act, is interested in his own benefit or of third parties, in any contract or operation in which he intervenes by reason of his function…”

After describing the operations, the Federal Chamber affirmed that “the documents in the file do not support, in a clear and unequivocal manner, that the actions of the former officials of the three aforementioned sections were united by the same intention to benefit the concessionaires and, therefore, that the various administrative acts issued by them are part of a single maneuver” framed in this legal figure.

The judgment indicated that “the possibility of a criminal act was confirmed in this file by the opinion of the administrative investigations office (PIA), which carried out a detailed analysis of the various administrative files and included the assessment of some of the evidence adduced in The Summary”. “However, from our point of view, the comprehensive analysis prepared by the specialized law firm, although it reveals a series of possible questions to the procedure of the administrative proceedings investigated, does not allow us to visualize -despite the assessments that it reflects – the insertion of a spurious purpose on the part of the officials acting, which connects the various events indicated with the subjective type of crime applied,” he added.

“The elements examined are insufficient to support the objective of unfairly benefiting the concessionaires and therefore of linking the different administrative acts in the same criminal act,” he said. “Nor is it sufficient to consider that the contractual extension(s) would have resulted in an advantage -according to the order of merit, this would consist of considerations to the contractors-, or that the bidding regime for which they would have opted -law 27.328- offered in general terms greater advantages for the concessionaires compared to the previous regulations -that is, the Law on Public Works, Decree 1023/01, etc.-, but this subjective element must be individual and sufficiently accredited”, it was underlined.

The Federal Chamber affirmed that “given the current state of the case, it is not possible to maintain – with the required degree of probability – that the evidentiary picture has as a common denominator the fact of unduly favoring the companies CV dealers. In this sense, the lack of evidence prevents sharing the judge’s vision and, at the same time, requires deepening the investigative task in search of other data that allow to elucidate the hypothesis of the case.

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