The first payment was in October 2019 at the businessman’s offices FERNANDO WHPEIclose friend of the federal judge Marcelo Bailaque. Entrepreneurs Jorge Oneto and Claudio Iglesias, who had already been denounced of course money laundering, They paid USD 40 thousand in cash. Whpei promised them that he would stop a batch of raids for his link with the magistrate. He did not comply: on October 31, Bailaque would end up ordered operations in the offices and even the private home of one of the financiers. The payment chain continued for three years. In total, Entrepreneurs would have delivered 160 thousand dollars.
The details of that plot are in the accusation of a group of prosecutors against Bailaque, wrapped in a scandal that has all justice in suspense. The magistrate was formally charged on Wednesday for three serious causes and dictated the preventive detention, which will not become effective until it is unfortunate. But the country’s departure is also prohibited and his assets were seized.
The maneuver against the financiers started in a roast where Bailaque, Whpei, an already deceased journalist, and the former head of Arca de Rosario and Santa Fe were present Carlos Vaudagnawho regretted and told all the details.
At that meeting, in the barbilaque building, it was decided that The first step would be the assembly of a cause against Iglesias and Onetofrom an anonymous complaint in the former AFIP that Vaudagna himself had to take to justice. The presentation linked them with maneuvers to wash money from drug trafficking. The ultimate goal was to extort entrepreneurs. Specifically, Ask for money in exchange for closing the investigations. But there was another hidden reason: an intern in the San Cristóbal insurance company, where Iglesias aspired to a promotion.
The anonymous complaint landed in AFIP on August 14, 2019. A few hours later, Vaudagna presented a letter in Federal Court 4 of Rosario. The date was not accidental: that day Judge Dance was on duty.
The judge advanced with the operation. As if it were another complaint, he requested fiscal, banking and stock market information of the pointed entrepreneurs. He also asked the former AFIP, who was part of the maneuver.
With the investigation in progress, Whpei contacted Iglesias, through a friend, and warned him what was happening in justice. “There is an alternative for you to solutions, I am a personal friend of the judge who has your cause ”, The businessman would have told Iglesias during a meeting at the International Museum for Democracy, as stated in the case.
The first figure they put on the table was 200 thousand dollars, As the Oneto and Iglesias businessmen reported before justice.
The first payment was given in October 2019. The financiers thought they had managed to stop the investigation. But on November 1, a series of raids were held in Rosario: in a house located on Maciel Street to 200, in the offices of San Cristóbal Seguros, at the Brío Valores Alyc SA firm, and in the house of the mother of Iglesias, where the businessman had registered his fiscal domicile.
“While the criminal case was processed, Bailaque, Whpei together with third people outside the process, acted coordination to continue pressing churches with the aim of obtaining more money. For this, the judge told Whpei every movement and novelty of the judicial file,” he says in the accusation he had access Infobae.
In 2020, Iglesias agreed to a second payment of 10 thousand dollars In Whpei offices, a financier who owned media in Rosario. Far from improving their situation, money demands continued.
The following year, always as stated in the file, two payments were recorded. The first, before August, when the judge ordered the call to investigation of the financiers. And the second before the end of the year. The “incentive” in that case was that the judge returns USD 115,624 and other values that had been kidnapped in 2019. In that case, Bailaque fulfilled and signed the return. The resolution is dated November 5, 2021.
The last payment occurred in the summer of 2022. “Before the request for dismissal filed by the defense of Iglesias and Oneto on March 28, 2022, Whpei demanded money again. In response to this requirement, Iglesias attended the private home of Whpei and handed him a new sum of money,” said the prosecutors.
In total, They were USD 160 thousand to deactivate an armed cause.
In his statement as repentant, Vaudagna separated those illegal payments although he admitted that they were part of the maneuver. “I above that there was going to be an economic benefit”said.
Prosecutors interrogated him for hours to know his true role. Vaudagna said he agreed to Whpei’s orders because he was “very powerful.” “At the inauguration of the Democracy Museum was Alberto Fernández …. He (for Whpei) had relations with the Kirchner family … much relationship with Macri. They were not people to whom one could argue things”, He excused himself in his statement.
The inauguration mentioned by Vaudagna occurred in April 2019, when Fernández was not yet a candidate for president. Four months later, he returned to Rosario for the closure of the All Front campaign, in front of the Flag Monument.
Only in this case, Dance is accused of the crimes of extortion, prevaricate, abuse of authority and breach of duties of public official, illegal search, and ideological falsehood of a public document.
The other causes against the federal judge of Rosario
In addition to the extortion of the financiers, Bailaque is linked to alleged dilatory maneuvers in favor of the narco capo Esteban Alvarado and his ex -wife Capuano Natalí Rosa, with whom he would have had a connection through the accountant Gabriel Mizzau.
At the time of imputation, prosecutors Juan Argibay Molina, Matías Scilabra and Federico Reynares Solari the They attributed to Bailaque had not excused themselves by intervening in a cause against Alvarado that was in his office since 2013. Specifically, They accused him of having delayed telephone listening to Rosa Natalí Capuano, who was responsible for one of the mentioned companies.
In his defense, Dance He argued that the telephone interventions to Alvarado’s ex -wife asked for prosecutors were “unfounded” and that the cause also ended in an oral trial. On the Mizzau accountant, at the audience on Wednesday, he admitted that they are friends but said they are distanced for another reason.
The last case against the judge is for the management of the funds of the Port Workers of San Lorenzo and Puerto San Martín. Dance authorized the request of the auditors to unlock the funds and transfer them to the mutual of retirees, retired and pensioners provincial, which belongs to the Union Group, whose manager is the financier Fernando Whpei, his friend.
The judge defended himself arguing that he did not appoint the auditor but renewed his appointment. “It was the auditor who requested the unlocking of the funds. Nor was it an order addressed to give the funds to an entity linked to Fernando Whpei”He said.
Wednesday’s audience put Bailaque in check. The Judge of Guarantees of Rosario Eduardo Rodrigues Cruz He ordered his preventive detention, as the prosecutors involved in the investigation had claimed. Also him prohibited the departure of the country and ordered embargoes from his assets and of their bank accounts
Dance is still in office because It has arrest immunity. But in the coming weeks the Magistracy Council will activate the complaints against him and in a short time he could suspend it while a jury is carried out.
