In an unusual decision, the cassation allowed Carlos Menem and Domingo Cavallo to go to court after conviction for paying premiums – 14/12/2018

In a very unusual failureChamber II of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cbadation has decided to allow the appeal to the Supreme Court of Justice of former President Carlos Menem and his Minister of the Economy, Domingo Cavallo, condemned in 2015 for the payment of bonuses to former officials with reserved funds of the CIDE during his government in the 90s. The conviction had recently been ratified by the same cbadation chamber, which generally rejects the means of continuing to appeal to the Court of a double-agreement sentence. In fact, if the court did not allow this appeal, Cendorsement should have been stopped immediatelyand Menem, only his privileges would separate him from a cell.

Unanimously, the judges Ángela Ledesma, Guillermo Yacobucci and Eduardo Riggi decided to open the way for those sentenced to the Court, to consider if a "reasonable time" has not pbaded for his trial since the events, more than two decades ago. Of course, this time has slipped thanks to countless Chicanas and procedural resources with which the accused cycled in the case, with the consent – at least – of the judges and prosecutors who intervened in the case.

On 1 December 2015, the Federal Courts 4 (TOF4) sentenced Menem to four and a half years in prison and Cavallo to three and a half years, while the former Secretary of Natural Resources, María Julia Alsogaray, was acquitted . That day, Judges Pablo Bertuzzi, Patricia Mallo and Nestor Costabel also declared the former Minister of Justice, Raúl Granillo Ocampo, guilty and sentenced him to three years and three months' imprisonment. imprisonment, although the cbadation subsequently annulled the sentence.

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The two former ministers were sentenced as necessary participants to the crime of embezzlement, of which Menem was considered the author. The accusers took for granted that during the Menem government bonuses were paid to ministers, secretaries and under-secretaries of state through the secret funds of the Secretary of State for Information (SIDE). The excuse was that some ministers were paid less than the directors or career managers of the ministries they ran, but at the trial it was found that the difference in salary was not such. Then, with another decree, they received the same money but as "entertainment expenses".

On October 12th, the cbadation confirmed the sentence. This time, Judges Ledesma and Ana María Figueroa-Subrogante in Room II before the appointment of Yacobucci- rejected the appeal of Menem and Cavallo, but his colleague Riggi voted that after the "deadline reasonable "for the trial, everything should be archived and nothing has happened here. Same as he had signed a week ago – but in most cases – to close the file on the illegal arms trade in Croatia and Ecuador, in which Menem was also accused.

"It is a typical court case that has fallen into oblivion and the weather has rusted," he said. Clarin Laura Alonso, head of the anti-corruption office, plaintiff in the case. "The defenses and many times the judicial operators have postponed the deadlines to prescribe it. The OA has been complaining from the start that she does not die and she did. But now, in a new procedural trip, even with the conforming double of the cbadation, a new instance is activated d & # 39; call. Everything seems designed so that neither Menem nor Cavallo conform to the sentence. "For the manager, the decision of yesterday" confirms the worst suspicions:It is difficult to condemn the powerful in Argentina, and even more to see them imprisoned. This is the logic of impunity, the one that rejects the Argentine society and that harms both the image of the judiciary and republican health "The ball, now, was at the foot of the court.