Armando Gostanyanwho knew how to serve as director of the Argentine Mint during the two presidencies of Carlos Sául Menem, died today at the age of 88.
The news was confirmed by his daughter Herminiawho remembered him from his social networks: “You instilled in me one of the most important values a person can have: humility. You helped so many people, some of them did not value or respect you. I know you like nobody knows you. I put, I put and I will put my hands in the fire for you without fear of burning”.
Gostanian remained hospitalized at the Mater Dei Sanatorium. Since 2017 he suffered from a “mental incapacity” due to “a neurocognitive or nervous system impairment” and his prognosis was “irreversible”.
The former director of the Casa de la Moneda was a Menem official between 1989 and 2009. The relationship with Menem was so close that the former president called him “the fat bolú” and he lent him his villa in Don Torcuato so that he could serve house arrest in the cause of arms trafficking to Croatia and Ecuador.
His management is also remembered for the emission of the so-called “Menem truchos”, an issue of two series of banknotes that were released to commemorate the 60th birthday of the then head of state.
The banknotes were made of legal tender paper money and that decision generated a strong controversy and earned him an investigation for embezzlement of public funds, from which he was finally dismissed.
Gostanian was no stranger to the corruption of Menemism since he was sentenced in October 2015 to five years in prison for the crime of embezzlement. TOF 4 Judges Pablo Bertuzzi, Guillermo Costabel and Leopoldo Bruglia determined that premium prices were paid for $1,262,084.51 to the German company Atlantic Zeiser for six purchases of machinery for the Casa de la Moneda between 1994 and 1999.
In this legal contextGostanian was ordered to return $160,104 and DM 1,217,876.80. It is the money from the surcharges that it was found that the then official stayed.
Gostanian was convicted in 2015; in 2017 the review by appeal was suspended for health reasons, but on February 15, 2019, the Federal Oral Court Number 2 decided to execute in full the confiscation ordered in 1,262,084.51 dollars.
The sentence against Gostanián was appealed by his defense and when it was in the review process -precisely before the Cassation- the Court “It decided to suspend the processing of the proceedings until his mental faculties were within normal parameters from a medical-legal perspective and he was in a position to stand trial.”
“In that resolution – the ruling clarifies – it was expressly stated that the confiscation provided was applicable as an accessory penalty to the five-year prison sentences and absolute disqualification imposed on Gostanián, and that its execution should be carried out once the conviction dictated against him acquired firmness”.
This never happened. The defense of the former Menem official criticized that the Court that ordered the confiscation “should have known that the ruling would be news and that Gostanián -due to his state of health- cannot exercise a right of reply.” And he alluded to “the preferential constitutional protection of the elderly and people with weakened health.”
Finally, Gostanian died without returning the money that was claimed from him for acts of corruption.
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