From the United States, the former secretary of the environment Romina Picolotti will be tried for corruption

Romina Picolotti, former secretary of the environment and sustainable development of the Nation of the governments of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, will begin on Wednesday for alleged corruption during his tenure. She is accused of using public funds from the Secretariat for personal expenses such as travel for relatives, flowers and chocolates.

Picolotti will be tried from the United States where she has lived since 2015 when she started working for an environmental defense association, her specialty. Due to the coronavirrus pandemic, the Federal Oral Court 6 allowed her to conduct the trial from there via video conference, a system that all parties will use. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m.

The former civil servant, who was in office from 2006 to 2008, is accused of the crime of fraud to the detriment of the public administration, which has a sentence of two to six years in prison, conly for using Secretariat funds for personal expenses which bear his signature as a guarantee. Among them, official flights in which family members have traveled, personal gifts such as flowers, meals and chocolates. One of the most striking expenses involved $ 77.50 at “Hooters”, a bar that’s occupied by half-naked women. When the federal judge Maria servini in July 2015 referred the case to the trial 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”.

In the case, there are about a thousand Secretariat expense tickets, not all of which are personal or unjustified. If Picolitti’s responsibility is determined at trial, in addition to a prison sentence, she may be ordered to return the money that was spent unjustifiably.

An expert in environmental law, Picolotti played a leading role in 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 Tribunal International in The Hague, where the conflict arose.

The oral trial should have started a long time ago, but for various reasons it was postponed. And the beginning coincides with the presidency of Alberto Fernandez, on whom Picolotti functionally depended while 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. In 2014, when the former civil servant was prosecuted in the case, Fernández, already far from Kirchnerism, said he had to give the necessary explanations and that the charge for which he was being prosecuted related to a problem which he did not had no knowledge.

Then-president Cristina Kirchner asked Picolotti to resign in December 2008 already when Fernández was not in government. 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. On one occasion, he even pointed out that the former official did not comply with informing the places she had visited. The Oral Court, then with another integration, confirmed its continuity in the United States for labor matters.

The trial will be under the responsibility of the Federal Oral Court 6, composed of the subrogating judges Sabrina Namer, Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu and Guillermo Costabel. The prosecutor will be Luciani and the only accused is Picolotti, who is defended by the lawyer Felipe Tucco. Infobae He contacted the defense to find out his position on the charge, but they said they weren’t going to comment at this time.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the public will be virtual. This will be done through the Zoom platform to which all the rooms will be connected. Last week there was a trial. 70 witnesses are expected to testify and a possible verdict date will depend, the sources said, on the dynamics of the process: the extension of witnesses, whether some are withdrawn during the trial and the court’s agenda. since the three judges are part of other oral courts. Hearings will take place on Wednesday.

I continued to read:

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