The court set to hear the long-running 'Cuardernos' corruption notebooks case has ordered an expert examination of the manuscripts before the oral trial begins.
The “Cuadernos de las Coimas” 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, the chauffeur of Roberto Baratta, a former government official who worked at the Federal Planning Ministry during ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s time in office.
According to prosecutors, business figures made illegal payments to state officials during the Kirchernite governments in order to win multi-billion-peso contracts for infrastructure projects.
Prosecutors allege Fernández de Kirchner, who served as president from 2007 to 2015, was at the centre of an illegal bribery ring.
The high-profile graft probe, which has not yet gone to trial, will see Fernández de Kirchner and a host of ex-government officials in the dock, along with a number of business leaders and entrepreneurs.
But as reported by Infobae, Federal Oral Court 7 has ordered an expert examination that must conclude within 90 days whether Centeno wrote the manuscripts at the heart of the case.
Defence lawyers have reportedly cast doubt over the veracity of the notebooks and have requested that Centeno, the chaffeur, provide a “handwriting sample” for comparison.,
Centeno, the other chauffeur of Roberto Barata, the right hand of Julio De Vido, was arrested on July 31, 2018.
He allegedly wrote eight notebooks keeping travel logs of visits to businesspeople who had dealings with the government for the payment of bribes.
Centeno was fearful for those notebooks and entrusted them to a friend, an ex policeman called Jorge Bacigalupo who eventually delivered them to La Nación journalist Diego Cabot.
After a group of former officials and a businessman were arrested, the case came into the limelight, and expanded further as a number of the accused signed whistleblower agreements to turn state witness and avoid jail terms.
The investigation into Centeno's notebooks is the axis of this case, though other existing avenues were added and annexed to the mega case file.
Fernández de Kirchner denies the allegations against her and claims they are part of an organised plot of “judicial and political persecution” designed to soil her reputation and put her behind bars.
– TIMES/AFP
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