a list of Cristina, bribes in a toilet and favorite businessmen

Three witness statements were crucial in this well-known case “the chamber“: the of José López, Carlos Wagner and Ernesto Clarens. The information provided allowed us to uncover the corruption mechanism that was later supported by the businessmen who paid the bribes. Bags full of money in Julio De Vido’s bathroomExcel spreadsheets with percentages, a exclusive listing from Cristina Kirchnerthe “little table” where everything was sorted out when there were public tenders and the final destination of the illegal collection. Everything consists of the height requirement It will be heard in the Cuadernos trial this week.

“There is persecution and cruelty” against her and she described the investigation as a “judicial move” that lacked evidence, Cristina Kirchner said as she defended herself in writing about the section of the bribery notebooks containing the investigation The cartelization of public works has been investigated. In this file, the judiciary attributes a prominent role to the former president: she was a director in the collection of orders and had the determination to help a group of companies that, in some cases, also did personal business with her.

In the Cuadernos case, the existence of an illegal association led by Néstor and Cristina Kirchner was established. The organization and functioning of what the federal justice system described as a “criminal organization” were revealed largely through notes, photographs and film footage Oscar Centenoformer driver of Roberto Baratta.

Although this evidence served as a starting point for the investigation into the global exercise, the facts confirmed in this part of the investigation were “revealed from the statements of the people involved” when they asked for it accused collaborators.

“It was revealed with great force that during the period under investigation there was a system through which the A criminal organization has illegally obtained money through the cartelization of public construction projects“, maintains the accusation that will be read this Tuesday and virtually during the eighth hearing of the Cuadernos trial.

Carlos Wagner He was responsible for “planning the process and putting into practice the illegal collection system within the framework of the Argentine Chamber of Road Contractors.” The program consisted of nominating candidate companies that could win a tender even if they did not meet the established legal requirements.

In this context, the entrepreneur was accused of having “participated in and orchestrated the structure to facilitate the direct selection of certain companies, disregarding the administrative procedures to be followed”. The procedure was guaranteed by the President of the Building Chamber and cThis mechanism also identified the illegal payments that companies had to make.

The financier K played a key role, Ernesto Clarens. He was the one who received payments directly from companies in the road construction sector and, from the beginning, was the only one in charge of the currency exchange and the necessary negotiations to be able to later transmit them to the final recipients.

The financier’s function was limited to a certain type of collection: those that corresponded to the small core of construction companies They were part of what Wagner himself defined as “la Camarita”.

In his confession, Clarens explained: “The Camarita people left me an amount in pesos with a note about what they had collected, the amount and the concept. The amount depended on the collection and was about $300,000 for each delivery and often weekly.”

The system worked like this: First, the member companies of “Camarita” argued about who would be the winner of a particular tender; This, an informal code states, is “clearly not the same as the rules of free market competition – which include rankings and the return of favors,” prosecutors said.

Once it was clear which company would be the winner, the National Highway Directorate began spending. At this time the debt collection cycle began, with Clarens being the first recipient of the sums of money or ‘proceeds’ paid by the businessmen as compensation.

In general, the illegal collection of funds during road construction works coordinated by the National Road Construction Directorate, in contracts that included financial advances, the amount of money to be paid to officials corresponded to a percentage of the amount offered for the work, generally between 3 and 20%.

For cases in which no advances were paid, amounts equal to a certain number of employment references were set. Clarens told it this way: “The first returns, which were made in 2003-2005, were paid out in the Camarita, they collected them. The people in the Camarita left me an amount in pesos with a note about what they had collected, amount and concept.”

The amount of money, i.e. the financial advance to be paid for the work, was paid to the debt collector in one, two or three payments. “The financial advance went entirely to the official, the withheld VAT, which had to be paid to the AFIP after 30 and 60 days, was used to start the work…” the indictment says.

The financier appreciated that The flow of money circulating through this collection circuit “could have reached $30,000,000.”

This file contains contributions from Jose Lopez, who directly targeted Cristina. When Néstor Kirchner died in 2010, he said: “Everything was suspended and in January 2011 the president called me in the Olivos office in the chief of staff area and told me: ‘You can be part of the problem or the solution.'”

At that moment, the former official says: “He shows me the notebook in which Néstor always wrote. Kirchner liked to hold personal hearings and what happened at these meetings he wrote in the notebooks that used to come from ARTE. I knew these notebooks because I usually wrote everything down there. I told Cristina everything, that there was a collection system for road construction work, I told her about the mechanism that I knew in the rest of the ministry.”

After this meeting, “the President De Vido asks for the list of monthly payments for all the works of the Ministry of Planning discriminated against by companies. And both ask me to do the same for the National Road Directorate, which depends on my Secretariat of Public Works,” said José López.

So, each month, “with the information from the work certificates given to me by the DNV directors and with the budget quota or amount that could be paid to the companies that month set by Roberto Baratta and Minister De Vido, I proportionally developed the list that each company was responsible for accounting for.”

The The list was handed over to Cristina and De Vido“In order for them to approve it, it was necessary every month and they were delivered to each one individually, personally and on paper. The president determined the amounts that Austral (Báez), CPC (Cristóbal López), Electroingeniería (Ferreyra) and JCR (Relats) should charge in principle, and what was left was distributed proportionally with the rest of the companies.”

The involvement of the former President of Justice was direct. “I sent the president and De Vido the first form with the data, it was for a week. She sent it back to me with the amount that these four companies were supposed to charge and I filled it out again and sent it to Passacantando. That was the list that was authorized to pay. That was from 2011 until the end of Cristina’s government.”

A special methodology was established in this cycle: Leave deliveries in a bathroom. When asked about it, José López said that the person who established this system was “(Julio) De Vido. He was present and told me to come in and I left it in the bathroom. Then we had a meeting at the desk.”

Giving further details, he said: “In the bathroom it was left on the sink or on the bidet lid. Somewhere visible. I would warn him and then when I sat down in the office I would tell him what I had left him.”

In this section De Vido and Cristina 191 acts of passive bribery are attributed to them.

According to the accusation, the payments to the former head of federal planning were made “weekly or biweekly”, while the payments to Roberto Baratta – according to José López’s confession – “were made more during the campaign season and those to De Vido during the election campaign and outside the election campaign”.

But there was a small group of companies that did not pay the financier Clarens: Austral Construcciones (Lázaro Báez) and CPC (Cristóbal López). “That was because they had a direct relationship with De Vido and Baratta. The times CPC paid Clarens was because it was in a UTE with another company.

These companies were on the list that the former president reviewed, corrected and approved.