Three men charged with the murder of Fabián Gutiérrez, a former private secretary of former presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Néstor Kirchner, will serve life sentences.
The Santa Cruz Criminal Court of Appeals confirmed sentences for Facundo Zaeta, Facundo Gómez and Pedro Monzón, who arrived in court in custody and will continue to remain under lock and key.
The guilty trio have yet to exhaust all their rights to appeal, with two more options open, including the Supreme Court. They will begin serving their jail time, despite the sentences not being fully confirmed.
The court found them guilty of “triple aggravated homicide, committed with malicious intent and criminis causa” (killing to hide another crime, in this case robbery).
The sentence was signed by Judges Jorge Yance and María Alejandra Villa, while the third magistrate, Joaquín Cabral, dissented.
Lawyers for the defence had asked for lesser penalties and charges.
Gutiérrez was found dead in July 2020 at one of his properties in the city of El Calafate, Santa Cruz. Police concluded he had been murdered.
The victim had recently become intimate with one of his killers. Yet once they were alone at the residence, he was subdued and two other accomplices arrived at the scene,
Assuming he was wealthy, they demanded he pay a significant amount of money in order to secure his release.
Again assuming that he had funds on site, they began torturing Gutiérrez in order to learn its alleged location. Ultimately, the victim was killed by asphyxiation.
Gutiérrez, a former private secretary to the two leaders of the Kirchner family, had previously faced allegations of corruption, though he had not been sent to trial for any crime. He had faced questioning in graft probes investigating potential wrongdoing by the former presidents.
– TIMES/NA
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