Notebooks: Techint executives were sacked | It was decided by Judge Ercolini, who instructed the former Secretary of the Plan, Roberto Baratta

the Federal judge Julián Ercolini sued to the former undersecretary for coordination and control of the Ministry of Planning Roberto Baratta and the businessmen and directors of the firm Techint in connection with the investigation of the alleged abusive payments arising from the so-called “cause of the notebooks”.

The magistrate held that there were the alleged payments described in the photocopies of the former driver of the Planning Ministry Oscar Centeno, although entrepreneurs exonerated from their responsibilities, because he argued that the expenditure of money would have been to avoid “serious attacks on liberty and integrity“of people linked to the multinational.

The revocations dictated by Ercolini – which are now subrogated by the court which was in charge of the late judge Claudio Bonadio – have benefited to Techint CEO Paolo Rocca; to the director of the company Luis Betnaza Yes to the person supposed to deliver money Hector Zabaleta, according to the decision which was known on Tuesday.

During the judicial investigation, one of the directors of the Techint company argued that the alleged payments were linked to the need for the Kirchner government to take steps with the Hugo Chávez administration in Venezuela ( 2008) for the alleged expropriation of the steel company SIDOR. .

“I understand that while the conduct entrusted to Betnaza and Zabaleta (of ordering and executing payments, respectively, to a public official) may have criminal relevance in terms of typical adequacy, I consider that on the basis proven facts that have been described, there would have been a cause of justification, under the terms of article 336, paragraph 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Nation, resulting in the issuance of the revocation of the appointees, ”Judge Ercolini said.

“His actions would have been the sole and forced motivation to avoid serious attacks on the freedom and integrity of people who worked in Venezuela in one of the companies of the economic group to which they belonged,” said the magistrate.

Then he argued – about Baratta – that “the absence of responsibility for the events of businessmen to whom the remittance of the money was attributed – which came from the request of the civil servant in emergency situation -, does not prevent the collection of money by the public official concerned from turning out to be a behavior which relates directly to the criminal type analyzed“.

Recall that a few months ago, Ercolini himself lodged a complaint for “impossibility of proceeding” for alleged concealment following the appearance of six alleged original notebooks written by the driver Oscar Centeno, the same ones which would have been destroyed. The magistrate decided to classify “because of the impossibility of proceeding, until new elements are obtained making it possible to clarify the facts investigated”. the complaint filed by one of the businessmen prosecuted in the Cuadernos case, Néstor Otero.