conflict between judges to advance the investigation

The first complaint was that of the former Marist Eduardo Freiler, at the court of Catania. Soon after, the national government’s complaint was lodged with Biscayart, which moved forward with numerous measures.

In the case, the prosecutor Claudio Navas Rial indicted about 11 people, including his own Mauricio Macri, by excancillary Jorge Faurie, to the former chief of staff Marcos Peña, and the former minister of security Patricia bullrich, among others.

Freiler’s complaint also points to the then Argentine Ambassador to the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Alvarez García; to the then head of the national gendarmerie, Gerardo Otero; and the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Enrique Amrein.

The elder Marist also recorded the context in which the war material was sent, noting that on November 10, 2019 Evo Morales he had to leave his post because his life was in danger and two days later he was refused asylum.

The national government denounced that the purpose of the shipment was “Make this repressive material available to the dictatorship that had just taken power in the neighboring country, led by Jeanine ñez, after the coup led by the Bolivian armed forces against the constitutional government of Evo Morales.”

“The criminal act consisted in the irregular shipment of arms and ammunition to Bolivia, by falsifying the quantities and destinations declared in the various control bodies and, in particular, before the customs service”, was indicated in the complaint of the executive power.

The war material made available to the Bolivian dictatorship would have consisted at least of: 40,000 AT 12/70 cartridges; 18 MK-9 tear gas canisters; 05 MK-4 tear spray; 50 CN gas grenades; 10 CS gas grenades; 52 HC gas grenades, according to public complaints from the Bolivian authorities.

Today, López Biscayart claimed the lottery system in the allocation of powers. For the judge, the case must remain where the first complaint was settled and bypassed. It is in the court of Catania, and it is there that must accumulate the presentations related to the smuggling of the material towards Bolivia.

“The drawing of lots is provided for by the Rules of the Court and is organized in such a way as to ensure transparency in the attribution of the complaints lodged. In short, with this system, the work is divided equally between the economic criminal courts and a possible impact on the guarantee of a natural judge is avoided. It does not matter then how long there is a difference between the drawing of the files – it can be minimal – or if the magistrate of the district court had a license – as was the case -, but the first mission is that which ensures the guarantee of the constitutional stake ”, explained the judge while requesting the intervention of the chamber to resolve the conflict.

“In this specific case, let us note that the prosecutor had delegated the investigation of the case 721 (the first) before requiring the investigation of the 722 (that of the government). And under these circumstances, he chose to push the test into the non-delegated process, causing the greatest advance of the non-delegated one. If the Tribunal’s criterion 4 was retained, the choice of judge would have been due to the activity or inactivity of the prosecutor, which implies the choice of the judge, ”warned Lopez Biscayart.

He continued his resolution: “If this reasoning is accepted, the attribution of jurisdiction in similar cases will depend only on the impulse decision of the judicial offices, to the detriment of the lottery system established by the regulations of the jurisdiction ”.

“The case does not present, at the discretion of this court and whatever the institutional connotations evoked by the prosecutor, any particular complexity justifying to deviate from the results of the drawing of lots, which does not affect the best or the faster administration of justice, ”he concluded.

The file contains the evidence provided by the government of the existence of two meetings held on November 12, 2019 at the Casa Rosada. In the first of them, former President Macri reportedly met privately with Faurie, who at the end of the meeting reportedly signed a “Suspicious note, hitherto unknown” by which he requested – outside the mandatory electronic and official communication system – the dispatch of personnel from the National Gendarmerie to Bolivia, with the supposed aim of defending the Argentine embassy in that country, which was in charge of the Norman ambassador of the time Álvarez García.

Likewise, the government added the existence of a second meeting held in Peña’s office, at which the former Minister of Security, Bullrich, and the former head of the national gendarmerie – among others – were present, and that these meetings would have taken place on order and organized the maneuver of smuggling the war material that was delivered by the national forces to the Bolivian police and air force on November 13, 2019.