the vice president Cristina Kirchner harshly criticized the judges and the Prosecutor of the Vialidad case and linked them to the former president Mauricio Macri. “Illegal association is theirs”he said, citing an article in the official newspaper Page 12. The head of the Senate announced that she will request the disqualification of the prosecutor Diego Luciani, who makes the allegation against him, and the president of the Court, Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu, who can be seen in a photo playing soccer, according to the article, “in the fifth of Mauricio Macri.”
This request from the vice president comes at the end of the days of arguments by prosecutors Luciani and Sergio Mola, who, among other things, showed evidence of messages that connect the former secretary of Public Works, José López, with Lázaro Báez and that also mention the son of the head of the Senate, Máximo Kirchner, as published by LA NACION.
In the trial known as Vialidad, Cristina Kirchner is accused of directing 51 public works contracts to Báez, who is linked to the vice president with other commercial businesses in parallel.
Luciani had affirmed on the first day of the prosecution’s arguments that an array of corruption never seen before was set up from the State. The prosecutor said a week ago that he is accredited that “an illicit association operated within the state,” with Báez as “business partner of Néstor Kirchner and his wife.” He blamed all of them for “immeasurable economic and social damage”, through an “extraordinary matrix of corruption”.
“Everything matches everything. Today, Page 12 proves that the illicit association is theirs. The President of the Court and the Prosecutor of the ‘Public Works’ case playing soccer in the country house of Mauricio Macri. Camarista Llorens plays on the ‘same team’ but that day he missed the game, ”he wrote, echoing a note from that newspaper, in advance of the continuation of the prosecutors’ allegations. Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola.
The vice president referred to the article on Page 12 entitled “Trial against Cristina Kirchner: The soccer matches of prosecutor Luciani and judge Giménez Uriburu in Macri’s villa”, in which images of these judicial officials are seen with the same shirt , within the framework of a soccer match that “they both played in the fifth of Mauricio Macri, Los Abrojos, when he was the President of the Nation”, according to the journalistic text.
In another message, he published another photo in which the prosecutor is seen again together with the president of the Court sharing another sporting event with Roby Martínez, brother-in-law of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta: “And if it is not enough for you… 2nd photographic testimony: in the ‘ same team’ plays Roby Martínez, brother-in-law of the presidential candidate of Cambiemos for 2023, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta”, Cristina specified. And she ironized: “To think that they put together a case for me because they said that one day they had seen Judge Cassanello in Olivos.”
In the same image, he also pointed to Jaime Méndez, Mayor of Cambiemos in San Miguel. And he stated: “Coincidentally, yesterday he was with Macri on a political tour of the town.” After this, he concluded: “I have instructed my lawyer to recuse the soccer players first thing in the morning. The Argentine judiciary sucks.”
“The mix shows that there is not much impartiality that can emerge from this conspiracy, to which is added that the same team -Liverpool- is also made up of the judge of the Federal Chamber, Mariano Llorens, who is not in the photo in the fifth Los Abrojos because that day he missed the appointment, ”explains the note from Page 12. The text bearing the signature of Raúl Kollmann described this group as “The judicial family” and recalled that this soccer match “appeared in the newspapers.”
As the trial progresses, Kirchner and the government tighten the rope with those who are carrying out the trial. Last week, they reported that Mola had gone to the Quinta de Olivos during the Macri government.
On Monday, August 1, Luciani opened his argument with a harsh criticism of the Financial Information Unit (UIF), the government body that 20 days ago, instead of accusing, requested the acquittal of Cristina Kirchner and the other former officials accused in this trial. “The work of the FIU was reckless. They did not value the evidence and the little evidence that they did value, they misrepresented it,” Luciani said.
In addition, he defined Báez as a businessman “created” to do business and defraud the State. “It was awarded 78.4% of the public road works in Santa Cruz,” he stressed. “In 39 cases, Báez achieved 700 months of extensions, something like 63 years. And he got more than 1500 million pesos in budget increases. All with an illegal procedure,” he added.
Following the vice president’s message, some opposition officials, particularly from the Civic Coalition, echoed the vice president’s remarks and expressed their opinion on Twitter. One of them was deputy Juan Manuel López, who shared a video of Elisa Carrió: “They were an illicit association that worked between 2003 and 2015 and they have to be condemned. There was a complaint, the oral trial is ending and there can be no impunity.”
With the same archival video from 2008, in which Carrió reports that he will denounce Néstor Kirchner, Julio De Vido, Lázaro Báez and other officials for aggravated illicit association, fraud, tax evasion and money laundering, the national deputy Maxi Ferraro added: “The desperation before the overwhelming evidence and the proximity of the sentence for having kept the patrimony of the Argentines upset the Vice President. The pressure of her to the Justice and voracity for impunity will not stop the truth or the condemnation”.