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Eduardo Sancho presided over Fecovita until June 2022 when he was replaced by his successor Rubén Panella. From the role he fulfilled, he assured in a letter document that a part of the checks with which Fecovita said he had fulfilled part of the debt he had with Iberte were actually to pay for a June 2022 supply and that they could never have been to pay for the millionaire debt that Fecovita maintains.
According to the Spaniards, it was reflected that Fecovita owes the Spanish about 50 million dollars (50% to Iberte for the capital it contributed and the remaining 50% to Evisa for the merchandise it did not deliver).
However, Fecovita did not reflect that debt in its 2021 and 2022 balance sheets which triggered a case that is being investigated by the Complex Crimes Prosecutor’s Office led by Juan Ticheli.
But also, In the last 2023 balance sheet that was approved by the board of directors on April 30, from the federation They claim that Fecovita partially fulfilled the debt when it delivered a certain amount of checks.
“Which Sancho now reveals, through a letter document is that At the time of issuing the first 8 checks, which were the ones he signed, it was clear that they were to comply with the supply of June 23, 2022. Therefore Those checks could never be taken as part of the payment of Fecovita’s debt with Iberte because the final agreement was signed 4 months later, precisely on October 13 of that year. This is a pathological lie,” explained the lawyer of the Iberte firm, Carlos Aguinaga.
That document letter from Sancho was in response to a legal request that the Iberte firm had made to him, and joined the case due to the alleged false balances that Ticheli is investigating and also to the cases carried out by the General Arbitration Court of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange.
Sancho’s ratification would also be added to that of Pablo Blas, general manager of Fecovita at the time of issuance of the checks. “He also expresses through certified communication that the 15 checks were issued in compliance with the supply agreement dated 6/23/22 and not to comply with the final agreement,” Aguinaga noted.
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Justice also investigates Fecovita for fraud
In addition to the case for the alleged false balances that is being investigated in Economic Crimes, the Federation of Wine Cooperatives also faces another case for fraud.
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Rubén Panella, today the re-elected president of Fecovita, is being investigated in a case for alleged fraud that was recently unfiled and is being processed by the Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office.
At the end of May, the head of prosecutors for the area, Alejandro Iturbide, decided to unarchive that case. understanding that the evidence contained in that case should be reinvestigated, plus others that have been added in recent days.
The cause of fraud It is against the president of Fecovita, Ruben Panella, the Secretary Marcelo Federici, the former accountant Jorge Iraneta and Juan Rodriguezwho was an accountant and general manager of that federation and bears the number 17,924/23.
Last Wednesday, May 22, Justice notified the parties that Iturbide had given the order to continue with the investigation of the reported events because the case is not closed.
In his writing Iturbide considered that in this case it was not appropriate to file the caseand explained that the file is valid as a solution “only for closed cases where there is effectively no new evidence pending production, where there is no line of investigation to deepen”.
And orders that “return the proceedings to the Investigative Prosecutor’s Office No. 7, so that the file can be removed, “The evidence offered is analyzed in order to produce it (article 347 of the Criminal Procedure Code), all in accordance with the previous foundations.”
“We must review the minutes of the Board of Directors of Fecovita”
That decision of unfile the cause of fraud was read by the lawyer of the Spanish firm Iberte, Carlos Aguinagaas a judicial setback for Fecovita, because it was something that his former partners had been asking for since last November.
“The prosecutor mentions, among other evidence, three minutes of the Board of Directors of Fecovita dated 2/10/21, 4/14/21 and 4/28/21, in which the receivership warns that they are not in a position to comply with the quantity of product committed. For us that it’s keybecause what is being recognized in those minutes is that Fecovita, knowing that it would not be able to deliver the wine order, partnered with Iberte and received more than 31 million dollars in payment for the product.. They issued the invoices but they did not deliver it,” Aguinaga said about prosecutor Iturbide’s decision.
The lawyer recalled that days ago he added as evidence to the case of false balance sheets a couple of audios of the president of Fecovita, Ruben Panella, “in which it recognizes the debt of that federation to Iberte.” Is about audios that Panella sent to José Retamero in September 2022, prior to Fecovita and the head of Iberte signing in October of that year the dissolution of the company they had formed
According to the lawyer, in that file that was unarchived there is evidence in which “Rubén Panella, Marcelo Federici and Juan Rodríguez recognize in their statements that Fecovita owes Evisa 13,000,000 liters of wine and more than 5,000 tons of concentrated must equivalent to US$23,000,000“.
“In turn, on 7/3/2023 Rubén Panella signed a sworn statement before his external auditor where he recognized a debt from Fecovita to Evisa of $3,688,857,452 in product value (wine and must),” he added.
The war in Justice
Since the Fecovita and Iberte partnership was dissolved, in the Evisa firm Debt claims began and the fight moved to court.
Iberte initiated a criminal case for false balance sheetsunderstanding that Fecovita did not record the debt that they claim in the 2021 and 2022 balance sheets, and that the former president of Fecovita, among others, is accused in this case. Eduardo Sanchothe current president, Ruben Panellaand the secretary Marcelo Federici.
“They have a debt with Evisa, which is the company they formed, and with the former partner who is Iberte. They owe Evisa 23 million dollars, which they themselves acknowledge, and Iberte owes another 26 million dollars. What we propose is that We do not want the 5,000 producers associated with Fecovita to end up paying that debt. that by the cooperative law They are co-debtors”, Iberte’s lawyer stated at the time, when prior to the election of the new authorities they opened the way to negotiation.
That ended up being truncated when Fecovita re-elected Panella as president.
In the midst of the judicial battle, Iberte also requested the judicial intervention of Fecovitasomething that did not prosper, since the judge of first instance, Eleonora Arenas, decided to reject that request. Neither did the request for the arrest of the Fecovita directors, something that Ticheli himself refuted.
For its part, Fecovita accused the Iberte company of extorting it in Criminal Justice and in the means to collect the debt they claim, and that accusation was also filed because it was unsuccessful.
