The death of the former mayor of Pinamar Roberto Porretti in the pool of a club shook that city and Argentine politics this Friday. The Peronist leader He was first suspended and formally dismissed as communal chief a few months after having taken office in the midst of a scandal at the request of bribes to club owners.
Porretti (65), who died of cardiac arrest while doing a diving exercise under the supervision of a lifeguard, was removed from his position as mayor in 2008 after a political trial carried out by the Deliberative Council and convicted by Justice a decade later. .
Due to the scandal, he was formally mayor of Pinamar for just six months, between December 10, 2007 and June 12, 2008, although some time before he was no longer serving due to having been suspended by the Deliberative Council.
After 10 years of the scandal that led to his departure from the Government, Porretti returned to politics and he comfortably won within the PJ, in 2017. It was with 75 percent of the votes, defeating his political enemy, the construction businessman Rafael de Vito, who had accompanied him on the list that ended 16 years of Blas Altieri’s management in 2007 and after the scandal stayed with the Mayor.
The following year, in June 2018, Porretti was sentenced to two and a half years in prison suspended for the crime of attempted extortion.
According to the case, between the end of December 2007 and the first months of 2008, Porretti’s Secretary of Government closed and revoked the authorization of the emblematic Ku bowling alley. The investigation revealed that this official demanded money that the owners of the place paid and that the demand was “endorsed and consented to” by the then communal chief.
Porretti’s sentence was finalized in February of this year after a resolution by the Supreme Court of Justice.
