Without any investigation, due to the mere passage of time, the Judicial Council filed the request for impeachment against the judge of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation Mariano Borinsky for his visits to Mauricio Macri in the Quinta de Olivos. The law that regulates the operation of the organization establishes that, if three years pass from the moment of the complaint and the file was not processed, its only destination is closure. That’s what happened and it’s obvious that it was deliberate to let him sleep without doing anything.
The scandal
The Council secretly signed the file on April 17 and it is impossible to identify the resolution on the organization’s website. This is one of the biggest scandals involving Comodoro Py judges. Borinsky visited Macri at least fifteen times during his term as President of the Nation, with excuses such as going to play paddle tennis or soccer. The presentation requesting his removal had been made by lawyer Marcelo Hertzriken Velasco. There was also a criminal complaint filed by former Minister of Justice Martín Soria and deputies Rodolfo Tailhade and Eduardo Valdés, which included another Cassation judge, Gustavo Hornos. Both were dismissed in June 2022.
Borinsky acknowledged the income to Olivos, but alleged that he was going to talk about the reform of the Penal Code, on which it is true that he worked but was never approved. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine fifteen visits for that matter. What constituted the core of the complaints were the coincidences between the dates on which the married couple would have seen Macri and a series of rulings against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and other former Kirchner officials who were of maximum interest to the then president, something he even boasted about. During the Macri administration, the judicial, political and media offensive was brutal.
One of the meetings, for example, was just before a ruling signed by Borinsky and Hornos ordered the reopening of the trout complaint that the prosecutor had made. Alberto Nisman against CFK, Héctor Timerman and other officials in the case of Memorandum with Iran, which had been dismissed three times due to lack of crime. The Cassation decision was the key for the late judge Claudio Bonadio draw a shortcut to reinvent the cause, prosecute the former president for treason, prevent Timerman from traveling to the United States to continue his cancer treatment (mistreatment due to which his condition worsened and he ended up dying during the process), order arrests , as the Carlos Zannini and Luis D’Elia, and send the case to trial. It is worth remembering that later the Federal Oral Court 8 said that there could not be a trial because there was no crime, but other Cassation judges, Daniel Petrone and Diego Barroetaveña, revoked that decision and ordered that the trial be held.
In August 2016, two soccer matches attended by Borinsky, which included several Macrismo officials, coincided with rulings to make way for the Money Route cause, in which Bonadio was confirmed as head and rejected an appeal for CFK. Later, in Dólar Futuro they confirmed the intervention of judges from the Federal Chamber, among them Martin Irurzunarchitect at that time of the doctrine that was used to dictate preventive prisons in bulk against former Kirchnerist officials for the sole fact of having held some position.
More visits, soccer and paddle tennis, coincided with the confirmation of a sentence to Miracle Room, the confirmation of a prosecution against the former president, the support for a trial against José Sbatella, former head of the Financial Information Unit, another against Alejandro Vanoli, former president of the Central Bank. With Juan Gemignaniand coinciding with more visits to Macri (some lasting several hours), they supported the “Viality” case and confirmed an embargo on Julio De Vidoand ordered the arrest of Beloved Boudou for the Ciccone case.
Nothing happened here
Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi considered that it was not proven that the judges’ meetings with Macri, which had revealed The uncovering, “have been the occasion for undue influence by Macri in the resolution of judicial cases under the jurisdiction of Dr. Borinsky.” Along with that, it said that even if there was no evidence “in criminal matters” the “possible political responsibility of the judges” could still be analyzed, in reference to the Council of the Judiciary, the body where judges are elected and sanctioned. That is where disciplinary sanctions or the start of a political trial can be approved.
Hertzriken Velasco’s complaint was first in the Disciplinary Commission and went to the Accusation Commission after the Supreme Court declared the unconstitutionality of a good part of the law that had given the Judicial Council a composition of 13 members and restored the law which had been repealed in 2006, which established the composition of 20, including the president of the Court as president of the body. That is to say, Horacio Rosatti signed the ruling that guaranteed him the presidency of the Council, a strategic place for the management of the Judiciary.
The resolution of the Council that archives the proceedings against Borinsky cites article 7 of law 24,937, which is what regulates the actions of the Council and which was questioned by the Court. But that article remained standing. It is what guarantees a mechanism that has a reasonable face, since keeping a process against a magistrate open for years can work as a condition, but it has another face that enables corporate protection. It says that the decision to open a removal or disciplinary process against judges “may not be extended for a period greater than three years from the moment the complaint is filed. Once the indicated period has expired without the file having been processed by the Commission, this will go to the plenary for immediate consideration.” As the complaint against Borinsky had been filed on April 9, 2021, the Council concluded that “the established legal deadline has fully operated” and that “the file should be archived.” Only that, he did not comment on Borinsky’s conduct, which was not even investigated.
