A number of top business leaders and ex-government officials in Argentina have offered economic compensation totalling more than US$1 billion in order to avoid standing trial on corruption charges.
Defence lawyers representing businessmen, financiers and ex-officials indicted in the so-called ‘Cuadernos de las Coimas’ corruption notebooks case last week offered cash, property overseas and even yachts as part of their offer to replenish the public purse in a court hearing.
Judges Enrique Méndez Signori, Fernando Canero and Germán Castelli listened to the defence before turning the floor over to plaintiffs from the UIF (Unidad de Información Financiera) money-laundering watchdog and the lead prosecutors.
Yet the offer looks unlikely to sway investigators – even before the hearing, Federal Prosecutor Fabiana León had requested that any proposal of money for acquittal be rejected.
During the September 12 hearing, staged by videoconference and convened by Tribunal Oral Federal (TOF) Court 7, León rejected bids by some four dozen businessmen to put up “integral reparation,” offering money and property to avoid trial.
“No price can be placed on the institutional damage they have caused – this prosecutor does not sell impunity,” León declared.
She argued that given the scale of the alleged corruption and the harm to institutions, reparations could not be measured in money and that the case had to proceed to public trial.
The 'Cuadernos' case centres on the alleged collection of bribes in return for the awarding of public works contracts. The probe owes its name to notebooks allegedly kept by Oscar Centeno, a chauffeur at the Federal Planning Ministry, who tracked illegal payments in a massive bribery and kickbacks scheme.
According to prosecutors, business figures made illegal payments to state officials during the Kirchnerite governments to win multi-billion-peso infrastructure contracts. Prosecutors maintain that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president from 2007 to 2015, was at the heart of the corruption ring.
Fernández de Kirchner denies the charges, claiming they are part of an organised plot of “judicial and political persecution” against her.
Centeno is said to have written eight notebooks, keeping travel logs of visits to businesspeople who had dealings with the government. Fearful about their safekeeping, he entrusted them to a friend, an ex-policeman called Jorge Bacigalupo, who eventually delivered them to La Nación journalist Diego Cabot.
After the first arrests, the case quickly expanded as several of the accused struck whistleblower deals to testify in exchange for reduced sentences.
Multi-million-dollar sums
In last week’s hearing, defendants offered multi-million sums and assets at home and abroad.
Financier-turned-whistleblower Ernesto Clarens proposed handing over a Miami flat and yacht worth US$1.5 million (already part of his lien). Enrique Pescarmona and Francisco Valenti pledged 510 million pesos, Julio Paolini 826 million, Mario Rovella 732 million, Hugo Dragonetti more than 1.4 billion and former Cabinet chief Juan Manuel Abal Medina around 60 million.
According to the calculations of defence lawyers, the offers total roughly US$1.1 billion in property and cash.
Marcelo Nardi, counsel for Pescarmona (who has since turned whistleblower), argued that his company IMPSA “not only did not obtain any hydroelectric contract, despite being Argentina’s leading firm in that field, but was also driven into bankruptcy and eventually nationalised under Alberto Fernández’s government.”
“We have explained that the payments demanded by public officials from Pescarmona and Francisco Valenti are linked to contracts with Venezuela, a [very] different country, representing extortionate episodes which were described in their statements,” Nardi added, ratifying earlier testimony.
Other businessmen, including Aldo Roggio, Alberto Taselli and Ángelo Calcaterra, also confirmed their offers. Defence lawyers stressed that the trial – involving more than 600 witnesses and one hearing a week – would be lengthy, costly and draining.
One lawyer, Luciano Pauls, warned that proceedings could last “between 10 and 20 years” and overwhelm the system. “How much will this trial cost a month? How many judges, secretaries, pro-secretaries? Approximately US$50,000 a month,” he said.
Pauls said the defendants“know themselves to be innocent” but need to resolve this issue, in order to be able to keep their businesses afloat and move on with their lives in the face of the “natural condemnation” imposed on them by the ‘Cuadernos’ case.
Ricardo Saint Jean, representing Roberto Orazi, was the first lawyer to raise the initiative. He pointed out that other mega-cases had “generated great expectations while ending up without answers for society or those indicted,” citing the “gold mafia, parallel Customs and gun-running to Croatia and Ecuador.”
“That’s the perspective we see in this trial,” he said, insisting his clients were innocent but had already “been serving natural sentences for six years” due to financial system compliance rules and public exposure.
Centeno’s opposition
Centeno, the author of the notebooks, rejected the ‘pay for clean reputation’ plan.
“At Centeno’s express command, I state his opposition. He sees it as an injustice based on economic clout which he, unfortunately, lacks,” said his lawyer Marcelo Sciegata.
Prosecutor León was equally categorical: “Corruption is judged, not negotiated. Honour cannot be paid. This prosecutor does not sell impunity.” She stressed that the harm was “to institutions, not to assets,” and warned that accepting payments would create “a market for impunity which rewards those who can pay while eroding democratic confidence.”
“The only natural and constitutional outcome is a public trial, not a transaction,” she concluded.
The UIF’s lawyer, Mariano Galpern, also rejected the proposal: “The money will return to state coffers, but only after a conviction and confiscation of assets. It’s about securing convictions and seizing illicit gains.”
Yet lawyer and Poder Ciudadano member Hugo Wortman called the defendants’ proposal “a historic milestone” that could let the state recover funds from corruption. “In other corruption cases, the money was never recovered – if this were to happen, it would be historic. Globally, that would be seen as more significant than sentences for organised crime such as terrorism, money-laundering and corruption,” he said in a radio interview.
He added that the accused wanted “to cooperate and provide information to prosecute former officials responsible for this criminal organisation, as well as repair the damage caused.”
Wortman concluded: “What suits society is to recover the money quickly and that the trial continues like all others.”
Biggest trial ever
The ‘Cuadernos’ case currently involves 174 defendants and 630 admitted witnesses, which will make it the largest trial in Argentine judicial history. A first hearing is scheduled for November 6.
The main defendant is ex-president Fernández de Kirchner, on trial as the head of an illegal association which arranged a system for collecting bribes during her presidential terms and that of Néstor Kirchner. The court alleges they oversaw“the biggest criminal organisation in recent decades,” channelling illicit funds from state contractors and laundering them in some cases.
She is joined in the dock by senior Kirchnerite officials including Julio De Vido, Roberto Baratta, José López, Ricardo Jaime, Abal Medina and Claudio Uberti, most of whom held key posts in the Planning Ministry and Transport Department.
The September 12 hearing was also attended by De Vido, Abal Medina and Uberti. Abal Medina’s lawyer confirmed his client’s offer to pay reparations, saying that being a public official at the time did not prevent him from offering to settle his lien of 60 million pesos.
On September 24, all parties must attend a key hearing to coordinate logistics, streamline the witness list and assess whether some accusations can be tried separately.
The Federal Cassation Chamber has urged acceleration to prevent the trial from dragging on for more than five years, as weekly virtual hearings currently suggest.
– TIMES with agencies
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