Ricardo Jaime questioned: "We did not buy high speed train and I did not get rich"

Ricardo Jaime he confessed in 2015 to having collected bribes from businessmen whom he had to control because he was the secretary of transport that he had exercised during the first six years of Kirchnerism.

He has been in detention since April 2016 and has been sitting since last week in the dock of the Federal Oral Court 6, where several cases are being examined. One of them is that of their illicit enrichment and that of their leaders. Another concerns the purchase of junk trains made by the state in Spain and Portugal.

Jaime arrived yesterday morning at the Courts of Comodoro Py 2002 in a Mercedes-Benz black truck of the Federal Penitentiary Service. On the sides of the truck, you can read "Vehicle recovered from corruption"He was wearing a brown suit, a helmet, a bulletproof vest and a black bag with papers.

After 10 am, a new trial started last week. They accompany him as accused, Julieta, one of his daughters, and Daniel, one of his brothers. They are accused of being leaders and other people who participated in the trading program put in place by Jaime at the transport secretariat between 2003 and 2009.

The former manager decided to testify at the trial, although he did not agree to answer the questions. At the beginning of his speech – which lasted a little over an hour – Jaime said: "We did not buy scrap metal and I did not get rich"

Then he tried to cement those two statements. With regard to the millionaire purchase of abandoned trains manufactured in Spain and Portugal, said that this had been done in accordance with the directives of the President of the time Néstor Kirchnerwho ordered him to buy delayed equipment, repair it here, and reactivate the production of the railway workshops. "It bothers you to talk about junk trains," said one who was convicted of the tragedy of the eleven, "because they offended the professionals who work in the state-bound railroads and inspected and approved the purchase of equipment ".

Jaime said that there was rolling stock acquired in this operation that works very well as "the mountain train in Cordoba and the one that goes to Rosario". The National Audit Office – which is congressionally dependent – determined that, during this purchase, surcharges of up to 171% had been paid, that a good portion of the trains was not working and that the latter was crushed and what was purchased was not controlled.

In his survey, Jaime said that after 2008 and after the adoption of a law, the transport secretariat "had no relationship with the railway structure" and that this responsibility lay with the Rail Infrastructure Administration (ADIF). And it was noted that in the legal proceedings for the purchase of trains to Spain and Portugal were not cited to declare members of the ADIF.

He used the words of his successor as secretary of transport, Juan Pablo Schiavi, to defend. "Schiavi said that they had not given him a budget for the repairs and that they had not granted him merit, but I am in oral and public trial."

He suggested that during the trial, members of Spanish and Portuguese state companies who sold the derelict railway equipment would also be charged: "I am going to exclude the fact that the Argentine state is being victimized. A scam … If he agrees that we buy scrap, I must deduce that we are states, and that the professionals who inspected and received the trains were scammed and that two governments would be scammers: Spain and Portugal, to declare this as a witness for the heads of state companies in Spain and Portugal, "Jaime proposed.

The former manager closed his monologue on trains acquired in Europe when he said: "We do not buy junk trains, the policy that Néstor Kirchner thought for the railways was filled during my mandate, I do not know why they were not repaired, they were taken to the workshops, those who have settled started to work, even some are still working ".

Jaime felt that his detention since 2016 because of high-speed trains was unfair. He explained that his sentencing to prison for the Eleven tragedy has not yet been confirmed, as an appeal is pending before the Supreme Court of Justice.

In addition, criticized the judge Claudio Bonadio who was the one who investigated the case for a fraud in the railway Belgrano Cargas, another of the cases on trial. He said that there was persecution against him since 2013, when Bonadio ordered his arrest. In July of the same year, Jaime was on the run for a week and the security forces of the time did not find him. The Federal Chamber annulled the warrant of arrest of Bonadio and Jaime was presented to Comodoro Py.

He also criticized Judge Julian Ercolini, who investigated the case of the millionaire purchase of trains in Spain and Portugal, as well as on those who investigated the case of the use of two cars that must be in other outbuildings. State, another of the ongoing trials jointly with the illicit enrichment.

Jaime, meanwhile, is the same one who admitted in 2015 to have been co-minted by entrepreneurs Néstor Otero and Claudio Cirigliano and to have denied being illegally enriched.

The investigators claim that several other businessmen paid bribes to Jaime and his men before they bought goods they could not justify with their income in white. In the Notebooks case businessmen Aldo Roggio and Gabriel Romero they admitted to paying bribes to Jaime, who denied the charges.

He also charged the judge and the prosecutor in this case: Sebastián Casanello and Carlos Rívolo. Casanello sued Jaime for illicit enrichment in April 2014 and yesterday, six years later, Jaime said he would wait to "read all the accounting information" to give more concrete explanations. Although he pointed out that Casanello had not read the expert report on which he had been sued because he had done so, "the only defendant should be me for my political responsibility and nobody else ".

He tried with this phrase to save his leading men, including friends, relatives and strangers.

The former Secretary of Transport does not pronounce the word testaferros. He prefers to call his relatives as they are called in the penal code: "Interposed people" for enrichment.

"It seems that the lives of the indicted persons started when they met me, they never had anything before me and that is why they are considered interposed," said Jaime, trying not to discriminate against his men.

The judicial investigation established that the standard of living of Jaime and his family had changed considerably when Cordovan arrived at the transport secretariat and could not justify where the money was used to acquire the goods.

He also recalled that he had signed a preliminary agreement with the prosecutor Gabriela Baigún, under which he was responsible for his minutes in four of the trials, including that of illicit enrichment. He accepted a four-year prison sentence, payment (with bribery money?) Of a millionaire fine on his behalf and that of his closest men in exchange for not not go to court. Among other things, he notably bought the house in which his daughter Julieta lived in Carlos Paz before his confiscation. According to the researchers, this house was bought with bribery money.

The federal oral court dismissed the agreement reached by the prosecutor, as provided for in the regulation, and the trial began at the end of April.

With the plea agreement, he wanted to avoid the lawsuit that he described as "emotionally untenable situation for his daughter". Jaime said, "I did not want to put all my family to judgment, I do not understand why the promise was not kept."

In this sense, he complained because, when his daughter Julieta was sued by Casanello, they suspended her at work. It was at the Córdoba headquarters of the National Civil Aviation Administration (ANAC). He reinforced – with erroneous data – the concept of persecution with regard to his family. "There is a double stick: Macri has badumed the presidency of the presidency in four or five cases and my daughter is fired for prosecution."

Convicted by the tragedy of Once, by a police officer and the theft of evidence during a raid, the former secretary of transport and one of the symbols of corruption in Kirchner, he did not say a word about for example, the yacht of one million goods he had in his possession thanks to the joys that gave him the entrepreneurs. From this luxury yacht will be talked about later in the trial for illicit enrichment.