The path towards defining the sentence for the four pharmacists convicted of the Ipross scam yesterday had a major obstacle: the defenses challenged the court and the second day in the trial caesura was paralyzed for several hours.
The lawyers Patricia Espeche and Carlos Vila, representatives of Sandra Fasano, Raúl Mascaró, Rodolfo Mastandrea and Fabio Caffaratti, submitted a brief in the early hours of the morning in which they asked that the judges carrying out the process be removed, warning that impartiality was irreparably affected during Tuesday’s initial hearing.
Judges Oscar Gatti, Laura Pérez and Luciano Garrido rejected this request and, in response to an appeal for review, Judge Julio Martínez Vivot had to intervene.
Espeche was the most emphatic when presenting arguments, mainly questioning the incorporation as evidence of the expertise that updated the amount of the damage committed against Ipross.
The lawyer stated that the dissemination of this data is part of a deliberate distortion, which seeks to justify a high prison sentence for her clients. That’s why she advanced against the judges, who in Tuesday’s debate enabled the presentation of those numbers.
Espeche said that the procedure had become “dangerous” and that it generated “a suspicion of deviation that is tremendous.”
“It is tremendous that I have to raise such a rude situation. It is a disappointment, but this court cannot continue to lead this trial. Oxygenate this process, if not, there is no justice,” he asked Martínez Vivot.
Vila, Caffaratti’s defense attorney, agreed with the prosecution and the plaintiff, who noted that the parties did not object to the evidence in the corresponding instance, which was a hearing prior to the censure. “Serious mistake by the defenses and I take responsibility,” said the lawyer, generating some surprise on the part of the condemned.
However, he maintained that this omission does not hide that “there is a defective procedural activity”concluding that “not only the reviewing judge is responsible for analyzing the evidence but also all judges, when we are talking about the viability of the evidence.”
“Evidence has been brought to trial that constitutes a procedural activity that makes it impossible to use in court,” said Vila regarding the updated amounts presented yesterday by the accounting expert of the Judiciary, Gastón Lenher.
Unlike Espeche, Vila said that he did not believe the impartiality of the court was affected, but he did understand that “There is a violation of the principle of equality of arms.”
Federico Rosbaco, representative of the State Prosecutor’s Office (complainant), considered Espeche’s proposals “absurd,” because “the expertise does not index any debt.”
“It is a gross ignorance of the law,” he said about his colleague.
Then, chief prosecutor Teresa Giuffrida went deeper, stating that there are no reasons to remove the judges from the court, because they answered all the defenses’ arguments in a well-founded manner and in accordance with the law.
Finally, Judge Martínez Vivot decided to reject the request for recusal, considering that “the trial judges have not acted with partiality”because the reproached incidents “had already been resolved in the hearing to control the caesura evidence.”
In this way, the list of 22 witnesses proposed by the defenses only began to be deployed during the afternoon, and is expected to continue today, the date that was originally planned for the arguments.
A negotiation that did not prosper
It was not only the recusal of the judges that delayed the times in yesterday’s hearing. Rubens Vila’s statement was also extensive.
Despite having represented one of the accused in part of the process, the lawyer testified yesterday as a witness. He was proposed by his brother, Carlos Vila, defender of Fabio Caffaratti.
And in that condition, he described that He traveled several times to Viedma to offer the Attorney General, Jorge Crespo, and the State Prosecutor’s Office an agreement, so that the pharmacist has an abbreviated trial, accepting a three-year suspended prison sentence, like the former pharmacy owners Marcela Gil and Marianela Guidi.
The difference that Vila made was that this proposal was “overcoming”because it included a monetary reparation for 70 million pesos.
The lawyer said that it was impossible for him to move forward and he disagreed with the position of the accusers and the complaint, because – he stated – an amount was being offered that covered the total damage suffered by Ipross.
From there there was an intense exchange with the representative of the State Prosecutor’s Office, Federico Rosbaco, about the role of that lawyer in the negotiation and about the parameters to calculate the amount to be returned to the social work and the interest.
