The federal prosecutor Raul Plee claimed the annulment of the ruling that decided to leave Ángelo Calcaterra out of the notebook case considering that the payments he gave to former official Roberto Baratta were campaign contributions. The representative of the Public Ministry based his request on the fact that The Federal Court of Criminal Cassation did not notify the Financial Information Unit (UIF), the complainant in the file, of the opening of the incident in which the resolution was taken.
The Prosecutor’s Office recalled the article of the Criminal Procedure Code that prescribes, under penalty of nullity, non-observance of “the provisions concerning the intervention of the judge, prosecutor and complaining party in the process and their participation in the acts in which it is mandatory.” And when analyzing the file, he pointed out that the FIU was not given access to the appeal that had motivated Calcaterra’s defense.
“Specifically, it has not been notified of the resolution dated December 7, 2023 that gave rise to the complaint filed by the defense, nor of the resolution dated December 11, 2023 that ordered the parties to be informed of the filing. of the case and its processing in the terms of art. 465 bis of the CPPN, nor the provision dated December 22, 2023 that set the hearing for April 18 of the current year, nor the resolution of June 19, 2024. In summary, the processing of this incident was carried out without the intervention of the complaining party, which, by virtue of the provisions of art. 167 inc. 2 of the CPPN, determines the nullity of all those acts carried out in the instance in which their participation was mandatory,” says the presentation to which he accessed. Infobae .
“The issue raised here constitutes, in my opinion, one of those exceptional situations that, if not addressed through this proposed means, would generate, along with unnecessary jurisdictional waste, the consolidation of a damage that is impossible to repair later, since a of the parties to the process have had their right to be heard and, therefore, to defend themselves in court, curtailed, which implies a clear non-observance of the rules of due process, whose compliance this Public Prosecutor’s Office must ensure,” Plee argued.
“This curtailment of the intervention of one party to the process, in this case, the complainant, generates for her a particularly serious grievance, since what has been resolved by Your Excellency prevents the normal continuation of the case towards holding the oral and public debate regarding the appellants, which frustrated the FIU’s claim in accordance with its request for submission to trial,” it was noted.
A week ago, Chamber I of the Federal Court of Cassation accepted a proposal by Calcaterra’s defense that payments made to government officials be considered campaign contributions and not bribes or gifts. The decision also affected his main collaborator, Javier Sánchez Caballerowho was detained in this case.
“We note that the data indicated, whose analysis was ignored by the oral court, do not contradict the versions of Ángel Jorge Antonio Calcaterra and Héctor Javier Sánchez Caballero when they pointed out that the payments attributed to them were motivated by financing the electoral campaigns of the political party Frente para la Victoria in 2013 and 2015,” determined Judge Diego Barroetaveña, accompanied by his colleagues Diego Barroetevaña and Carlos Mahiques.
For Cassation, “The data is not isolated, it has already been verified” that the dates on which the money deliveries attributed to the accused took place “are contemporaneous with the electoral campaigns of the elections carried out in the years 2013 and 2015.” And he stated that the Oral Court “said nothing about the information provided by the appellant related to the fact that his clients, through the company Creaurban SA, made contributions to the 2007 presidential election campaign in favor of Frente para la Victoria. . This information is of interest because, as the defense alleges, it would indicate that the contribution of money to an electoral campaign was not a new fact for his clients.”
The Cassation decision caused a shock in the case and the suspicion that a domino effect could occur throughout the file, with the rest of the accused asking for the same treatment.. Meanwhile, prosecutor Fabiana León denounced the oral court for delay of justice in two of the files that make up the Cuadernos mega-case, which was born with the notes of the remisero Oscar Centeno but to which other related files were added – some existing, others that were born from the own sayings of the repentant. In two parallel resolutions, Chamber I and Chamber IV of the highest court urged the judges of the Oral Court to move forward with the oral trial. He was elevated by Judge Claudio Bonadio at the end of 2019 and still does not have a trial date.
In the countdown to the sixth anniversary of that scandal becoming public with raids, arrests and a flood of repentants, prosecutor León urged the case to reach an oral trial with all those involved in the dock: from Cristina Kirchner and its officials to the main businessmen who agreed to testify as accused-collaborators and detail the payments they had made on the trips headed by the former number 2 of Planning, Roberto Baratta. These trips were detailed in the notebooks of his driver Oscar Centeno and gave rise to this file.
