After 14 years, former environment secretary Romina Picolotti to testify from Miami in corruption case

After 14 years, Romina Picolotti, former secretary of the environment and sustainable development of the Nation of the governments of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, will today begin to stand trial for alleged corruption in the use of public funds such as appointing family members to the state or personal expenses such as trips for parents, flowers and chocolates.

At 10 o’clock, Picolotti to connect to court hearing from home in Palm Beach, USA, where he has lived since he started working for an environmental defense association, his specialty. The Federal Oral Court 6 authorized her to speak by videoconference following the coronavirus pandemic.

The former official is accused of the crime of fraud to the detriment of the public administration after his brief stint in government between 2006 and 2008. The crime is punishable by a penalty of two to six years in prison.

Among the public resources he allegedly used for personal purposes, official thefts were detected in which relatives and personal gifts were traveling. One of the most striking expenses involved $ 77.50 and “Hooters”, a bar known for be served by waitresses in tight clothes. When the federal judge Maria servini sent the case to trial in July 2015 described: “This receipt wrote above” Thank you very much !!!! “with exclamation points, as an accomplice thank you to those who frequented the places and made consumption with public money”.

The file includes about a thousand tickets for the expenses of the Secretariat. Some are neither unjustified nor personal. For these excess expenses, in addition to the conviction, Picolotti might have to return the money.

An expert in environmental law, Picolotti became known for her opposition to the installation of the Botnia paper mill in the town of Fray Bentos on the Uruguay River and was one of the country’s representatives before the International Tribunal of The Hague, where the conflict broke out. In a usual strategy of Kirchnerism to add social leaders, she was then convinced to join the government. At that point, they wanted to send a signal to calm the conflict, but the tactic failed and the environmental protest continued to escalate.

Coincidentally, the start of the trial coincides with the presidency of Alberto Fernandez, on whom Picolotti functionally depended when he was in government and who was his main support. “A file was copied that was circulating which was nothing more than a political operation to injure a government official,” Fernández said in July 2007 at a press conference with Picolotti after the newspaper’s publication Bugle on irregularities. Later, in 2014, when the former official was dealt with in the case, Fernández said she had to give the necessary explanations and that the charge she had been dealt with concerned an issue he was not aware of. aware.

Then-president Cristina Kirchner asked Picolotti to resign in December 2008 already when Fernández was not in government. The Cordovan Currently, the former official resides in Miami and works at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.

Picolotti’s residence in the United States was a point of conflict between the defense and the trial attorney, Diego luciani. The prosecution objected to Picolotti continuing to live there and demanded that she return to the country to stand trial.

In January, the Federal Chamber of Cassation dismissed a complaint by the nation’s former environment secretary for “unreasonable length” of the trial. The complaint has gone 14 years without judicial resolution and will begin to be traced via the Zoom platform. Who will dictate the sentence is the Federal Oral Court 6, composed of the subrogatory judges Sabrina Namer, Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu Yes Guillermo Costabel. The prosecutor will be Luciani and 70 witnesses are expected to testify.

I continued to read:

Former Secretary of the Environment Romina Picolotti from the United States will be tried for corruption

Romina Picolotti bought a house in the United States as she was the subject of a judicial investigation

At the request of Cristina Kirchner, the cassation hearing for the cause of the “future dollar” was held on March 4