The Chamber of Cassation confirmed another money laundering conviction against Lázaro Báez
The Court of Cassation confirmed the money laundering conviction against Lázaro Báez for the purchase of the “El Entrevero” ranch in Uruguay. In addition, he ordered a fine of almost $15 million and a prison sentence of four and a half years.
The second money laundering conviction against Báez came as part of the file focused on the purchase of the El Entrevero field, a file related to Money Route K, where the owner of Grupo Austral was already sentenced to ten years in prison for laundering $55 million through Austral Construcciones, his flagship company.
Located in Uruguay, the field has an area of 152 hectares. $14 million was spent on the purchase. The judgment explained that to carry out the operation, various “sham companies” and the names of Lázaro Báez were used to disguise the real owners of the property.
In justifying the impeachment verdict, the Federal Court 4 (TOF 4), composed of judges Jorge Gorini, Néstor Costabel and judge Gabriela López Íñiguez (who voted against), explained that the $14 million used to purchase El Entrevero does not represent the $55 million laundered in the case known as Money Route K.
The very sentencing of Báez to ten years in prison for money laundering in the Money Route K case served to prevent the FATF from sanctioning Argentina by sending it to the international organization’s gray list of non-cooperating countries.
A first information that emerges from the arguments of TOF 4 is that, when weighing the evidence developed during the trial, the “free availability of funds generated by criminal activities and their simultaneous expatriation through real estate transactions that did not pursue commercial purposes, but solely the channeling of these funds under the appearance of legality” was considered confirmed.
Under this premise, something was analyzed that every money laundering operation requires: the previous crime, i.e. the illegal origin of the funds used for the money laundering maneuver.
Judges Néstor Costabel and Jorge Gorini pointed out that “the illicit origin of the funds subject to these operations is based on the tax evasion maneuvers of Lázaro Antonio Báez and his holding companies”. These maneuvers resulted in a large availability of counterfeit funds, which were later “directed into various money laundering operations.”
Valle Miter SRL, the company founded in 2008 whose only client was the Kirchner family, falls into this precedent-setting crime. It was tasked with managing three hotels, La Aldea de El Chaltén, Las Dunas and Alto Calafate. But especially the latter, for which he paid former presidents a fee.
The problem, according to the court, was that the company did not generate any income to cover these expenses, which it corrected by receiving money from Austral Construcciones, which by 2010 had already established itself as one of the main public road construction companies in Santa Cruz: it had 43 of the 51 tenders awarded by the Kirchner government. The intercompany loans amounted to over 70 million pesos. An availability of funds that were available to the construction company due to tax evasion.
In addition to these allegations, other events were also viewed as substantiated in the trial.
Two additional irregular transactions were also discovered and investigated. Another property in the San Ignacio Lighthouse area, now confiscated, was valued at $320,000.
To this list of illegal maneuvers was added another $800,000 resulting from the purchase of an apartment in the building at Avenida del Libertador 2442, in an expensive area of Palermo, with the intention of money laundering.
Lázaro Báez arrived before the Court of Cassation in the face of the new legal setback.
Despite the arguments presented, the court, composed of judges Mariano Borinsky, Javier Carbajo and Gustavo Hornos, rejected the defense’s appeal against the verdict convicting him as an accomplice to the crime of money laundering and confirmed the sentence imposed: four years and six months in prison.
In the same case, the appeal of the Báez defense for money laundering in connection with the purchase of real estate in the “El Faro” area on the east coast of the neighboring country was also rejected.
A fine of three times the amount of the transactions was also ordered.
The judges of Chamber IV of the Federal Cassation Chamber were of the opinion that the verdict of the Federal Criminal Court No. 4 “applied appropriate and adjusted weighting to the evidence presented at the trial proving the involvement of the defendants in the money laundering operation.”
In this context, “various indicators pointing to the defendant’s responsibility were weighed, such as: the use of payments based on compensation maneuvers; the use of opaque legal entities without commercial activity; the intervention of third parties in various jurisdictions.”
Also taken into account were “the beginning of the process at the head of one legal entity and its completion for the benefit of another;
The details of the issues assessed by TOF 4 at the time of sentencing include: the selection of an asset of very high value without a comprehensive search for alternative assets; the lack of strategic planning for the alleged project due to its complexity; the lack of formal partners for a company of the touted caliber.
Finally, the correspondence of a large part of the participants of these events with those protagonists of the K money route was taken into account, such as the “apparent lack of information or formal documentation about the actual final beneficiary; the coincidence in time with the illegal actions and facts of the group led by Báez; the use of signatures also linked to the maneuver accused in the case, among other indicators.”
In this sense, said the chamber members, “the ruling consolidates the commitment of the powers of the Argentine State to prevent, investigate and punish money laundering.”
