The country’s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a series of appeals from a group of businessmen who demanded their cases be analyzed by the electoral justice system rather than the criminal justice system, by confirming that the money they provided during Kirchner’s term was in fact, Informal campaign contributions.
With the signature of Justices Horacio Rosati, Carlos Rosencrantz, and Riccardo Lorenzetti, the Supreme Court rejected the offers Defensemen Hugo Dragonetti, Jorge Mauricio Balan and Armando Lawson.
Lawson, who repented in the case and admitted the payments, is the businessman who denounced, in another case, that part of the references about him in the notebooks of Roberto Barata’s driver, Oscar Centeno, were forgeries. Expert opinion showed that the notebooks were authentic although some pages were overwritten.
Failure He supports the continuation of the oral trial In the bribery notebooks case against the 86 defendants, including businessmen who tried to get out of the case and go to electoral justice.
The court’s decision was based on the fact that the offers that It was not directed against a definitive sentence or something similar.
It is the same response that has already received more than thirty proposals in recent weeks that sought to question various aspects of the set of cases whose trial began at the beginning of November before Federal Oral Court No. 7, with former President Cristina Kirchner, former officials and businessmen in the dock.
Before the 7th Federal Oral Court, Lawson’s defense argued that the cash deliveries that the Albanesi SA director admitted to having made in the case were limited “On campaign contributions for 2013 and 2015 and that these payments did not involve personal benefit or advantage to their companies.”
In his argument, Lawson He relied on the case of other businessmen such as Manuel Santos Uribelaria, Alejandro Ivanisevic, and Hugo Ornikian, who, According to them, in similar cases, they were able to refer their cases, under investigation, to the electoral justice system. Performances were made to the same effect by the Dragonetti and Palan defences.
In February 2024, TOF 7 rejected the incompetence claim. Lawson was told that this argument was not new, and that it had been raised in the investigation, and therefore the application was rejected. The same happened with other presentations.
In June 2024, the First Chamber of the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber accepted the two defences’ complaint. Among them was also businessman Angelo Calcaterra – a cousin of former President Mauricio Macri – who in his statements at the investigation from the beginning of the case said that Kirchnerian requests for money were for the sake of the election campaign.
At the end of November, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals by a majority He confirmed that the businessmen will face oral trial on charges of bribery.
The trial began in early November. There, several case files are being tried, known in the media as the Cuadernos de las Bribes case, which was known on August 1, 2018, with the arrest of officials and businessmen who were mentioned in the memoirs of driver Oscar Centeno.
For the defendants, a system of corruption was described that allowed the Ministry of Planning to collect alleged bribes so that businessmen could obtain tenders and contracts. The former head of the Umma Party, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, 19 former officials, and 65 businessmen, among others, are being tried in this case. The issue was fueled by the statements of dozens of repentants who confirmed the operation and explained its details.