Cause of the notebooks: the FIU returns to the accusation against the dismissal of Paolo Rocca | Presentation before the Chamber of Cassation

The Unidad de Información Financiera presented a recurso ante la Cámara de Casación para objetar la decisión de la Cámara Federal porteña that rechazó analizar la apelación de la UIF contra el sobreseimiento del CEO de Techint, Paolo Rocca, y otros directivos en los llamada causa notebooks.

The body appealed to Chamber I of the country’s highest federal criminal court after the Federal Chamber in Buenos Aires denied its appeal against Judge Julián Ercolini’s ruling. The magistrate definitively dismissed from the Rocca case, the entrepreneur Luis Betnaza and another member of the company at the time of the facts, Héctor Zabaleta, even though they admitted having paid bribes.

In the cassation appeal, the FIU requests that its appeal be allowed and that the federal judge’s decision be reviewed. Ercolini considered that the payment of bribes by businessmen was justified by a situation linked to the Sidor factory in Venezuela, in the midst of negotiations for nationalization, with the need to preserve security and jobs: they allegedly made illegal payments to officials for aid. But none of this had to do with the arguments Techint’s men made when they said they were sorry in the case.

In its appeal, the FIU “revealed that the decision which considers the” state of necessity “alleged by the multinational businessmen to be proven, with no evidence having been able to link the alleged payments of money to the measures of force taken by unions in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela “. The UIF also questioned another of the ruling’s arguments, according to which Techint Group CEO Rocca “was unaware” of what had happened.

In addition, the agency recalled that in the same resolution Judge Ercolini was being prosecuted for an alleged “gift” from the former civil servant Roberto Baratta. The crime of “gift”, clarified the FIU, “does not allow to prosecute some and to dismiss others. To hold the contrary violates the principles of impartiality, coherence, rationality and non-contradiction which must accompany judicial decisions “.

The FIU argued that at the time of the appeal, by adhering to the same Baratta proposal, it met the required requirements “because: a) it has the legal right to appeal, b) it has made the adherence within the time limit for the summons the granting of the appeal has been notified to the defense of the accused Baratta, and c) the grounds for criticism of the Ercolini judgment have been expressed ”.