Cristina Kirchner challenged the prosecutor Diego Luciani and one of the judges in the Vialidad case – Up Jobs News

Cristina Kirchner challenged the prosecutor this morning Diego Luciani and the judge Rodrigo Gimenez Uriburu and asked that the two leave the Vialidad case, where she is being tried for illicit association and fraud against the State.

The vice president had anticipated yesterday that she would do so. The basis is a note from Page 12 that told that Luciani and Giménez Uriburu are partners in an amateur soccer team (called Liverpool) and that the two went to play Los Abrojos, the fifth of Mauricio Macri. The publication included a photo of both that, according to Page 12, was taken on the former president’s courts.

Neither the judge nor the prosecutor will accept the challenge. Sources close to both told THE NATION that, although they share a team, they maintain that they do not have a friendly relationship and that they do not have a link with Macri either. Neither Luciani nor Giménez Uriburu deny having gone to play in the former president’s fifth (they even acknowledge that they may have once played against Macri), but they say that it was to participate in an amateur tournament where there were many other teams and that it was before they received the highway case.

Charles Berladi, the vice president’s lawyer, presented the brief with this statement this morning, before the scheduled time for the oral trial to resume and continue the prosecutor’s argument, which last week was very harsh against Cristina Kirchner. She accused her of having been the head of an illicit association created to extirpate funds from the National State “from the top of power.”

In his presentation this morning, Beraldi not only asked that the judge and prosecutor be removed from the case; also, that everything done by them in this cause be annulled.

The president of the court, Jorge Gorini, reported that they had decided to proceed with the proposal (another option was to reject it “in limine”, something unlikely in this case) and that both Luciani and Giménez Uriburu will now have 24 hours to present a report. in response to their objections. In the meantime, the process will continue.

This morning, the hearing started minutes later than usual. Gorini reported that it was because they were analyzing Beraldi’s request.

After the president of the court reported the procedure that would be given to the challenge, Luciani asked for the floor and asked to answer “orally” the questions raised by the defenses. “Now or when they have it,” he said. He argued that an oral response would give greater “transparency” to the process. Gorini replied that there was no objection to that, but that since two other defenders announced that they would also present challenges, the court would enable him to answer once all the arguments had been presented.

The first who announced that he will also challenge Luciani and Giménez Uriburu was Maximiliano Rusconi, Julio De Vido’s lawyer, who said that he will also add a challenge against the other prosecutor, Sergio Mola.

De Vido and Rusconi were among the first to connect this morning to the hearing’s Zoom. Before the trial day formally began, the former Minister of Planning, in a visible good mood, asked Rusconi if ​​he had charged his partner -also De Vido’s lawyer- Gabriel Palmeiro, a fan of Independiente, for the game that last night Rio won. “Where is Palmeiro? Didn’t you load it?” De Vido said. They discussed, with all the other Zoom participants in silence, a controversial move. According to De Vido, a Boca fan, they should have charged the River striker, Miguel “El Colibrí” Borja. “You have no objectivity. It’s good that you are not a sports commentator or a judge,” Rusconi told him. “I’m more for a prosecutor,” De Vido replied. And with a smile that contrasted with the serious faces of defendants and defenders on Monday morning, he closed the talk: “Peronism is joy.” De Vido is one of the 13 defendants in this trial. According to Luciani, he was a key player in the illicit association that Nestor and Cristina Kirchner set up.

The vice president’s lawyer questioned Luciani and Giménez Uriburu for two reasons: the relationship between them and having gone to play soccer at Macri’s villa.

Article 55 of the Criminal Procedure Code states that “the judge must refrain from hearing the case” if “he has a close friendship, or manifest enmity with any of the interested parties.”

Regarding the link between the judge and the prosecutor, Berladi stated: “This personal relationship, which was kept confidential at all times, should have been formally communicated to the defense -and, strictly speaking, to all of society- once this process , of singular institutional relevance and media importance, was filed before this Court”.

For the lawyer, the judge should have excused himself from intervening in the trial. “The serious omission incurred by Judge Giménez Uriburu had the explicit endorsement of prosecutor Luciani, an extreme that denotes a serious violation of the duties of safeguarding legality and objectivity that weigh on all members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” supports the brief of the vice president’s lawyer.

“In a few words and so that everyone understands -adds Berladi-: promoting a case as a prosecutor so that a friendly judge resolves it is not innocuous behavior from the legal point of view, especially when it comes to a representative of the Public Ministry who so much emphasis is placed on the need to safeguard transparency in the exercise of public affairs”.

“It is worth asking: what would have happened if yesterday photographs had been released in which the members of the Court had appeared playing soccer with the people who are being tried in this process? Without a doubt, we would be in the presence not only of a national scandal, but also before the immediate promotion of a criminal case against the judge who would have developed such conduct and the promotion of his impeachment”, affirms Beraldi.

The lawyer highlights in his letter that they did not play soccer “anywhere” but in Macri’s fifth. “Does the behavior of these judicial officials correspond to common sense -so many times invoked by prosecutor Luciani in his recent allegation- and to the principles that must be observed in a judicial process, especially in a case of such institutional relevance ? (…) Did they think that nobody was going to find out about such a situation? Do they consider that they are part of an estate that should not be held accountable for their actions before the rest of the citizenry? Does it seem reasonable to you that the prosecutor who is accusing and the judge who is supposed to try Cristina Fernández de Kirchner play soccer games in nothing less than the country house of Mauricio Macri, whose government promoted this same cause and became a plaintiff and civil actor through of the Anti-Corruption Office, the Financial Information Unit and the National Directorate of Roads?”

For Berladi, neither Giménez Uriburu nor Luciani can continue to intervene in the case and “all the procedural acts carried out by the appointed magistrates” must be annulled.

The judge and the prosecutor will have 24 hours to respond to the claims against them. Surely that term will begin to run tomorrow, when the new challenges advanced today by defenders of other defendants are presented. Luciani has already been authorized to present his arguments orally. Giménez Uriburu will do so in writing.

What are those arguments? As they anticipated THE NATION sources close to the judge and the prosecutor, they do not deny sharing a team or having played in Macri’s fifth, but they will allege that they are not friends with each other and that they have no personal or social relationship with Macri. They attended the fifth just to participate in a good amateur tournament.

“Liverpool is a team that is 41 years old, for which many players have passed. We play normally in Atalaya [otro campeonato de zona Norte] and discontinuously in the Los Abrojos tournament, which is a high-level open amateur tournament, where there are dozens of teams,” a Liverpool player told THE NATION.