Under the radar: the unusual closure of the case for illicit enrichment of the judicial operator Javier Fernández

The judicial operator and Auditor General of the Nation Javier Fernandez had a cause for illicit enrichment it was what unusually closed. The decision, taken seven months ago, has gone under the radar. The decision was signed by the federal judge Ariel lijo, at the request of the prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, in September of last year, when Lijo – who was not the judge of the case – momentarily subrogated Court 7, from the judge Sebastián Casanello.

The case against the historical Peronist judicial operator was born from the derivation of the cause of the corruption notebooks. In the archives of Oscar Centeno, Fernández was mentioned in 2015 as “Javier de Inteligencia”, a link he denied when he testified in court for the deceased Claudio Bonadio.

Bonadio promoted the opening of the case against Fernández, after receiving a report from AFIP which indicated possible irregularities in his assets. The complaint, filed in December 2019, returned to the Casanello court, which delegated the investigation to prosecutor Taiano.

AFIP report evokes “anomalies” which, among other circumstances, “led to in 2015, the total income declared by the agent [Fernández] will register a variation of 289% compared to the previous year, the exempt incomes being those which knew the strongest increase ”. The increase in assets occurred in the same year in which, according to Centeno’s records, Fernández allegedly received bags of Roberto Baratta. According to information in the notebooks, Fernández’s house was the only place where Centeno delivered bags instead of receiving them.

The AFIP report which reached Bonadio indicated, among other elements, the existence of three fixed mandates that Fernández had at Banco Macro with members of his family (one of them, his brother Sergio, a maid), and reported that the bank itself said it did not know the origin of the funds.

He said, for example, that in 2015 Fernández reported “exempt income in his affidavit for $ 8,120,899” corresponding to the line “interest from savings deposits, special savings accounts, fixed-term, other”. And he added: “It was not possible to verify the economic reality of these since the deposits in money at the beginning of 2015 and their reinvestment would have had a profitability much higher than those offered by the financial market for this period.”

Last year, with Casanello on leave, Taiano issued an opinion in favor of Fernández, in which he called for his dismissal. He understood, on the basis of an accounting study on his affidavits, that there were no irregularities in the accounts declared by Fernández.

Lijo’s decision reviews AFIP’s observations and states that the prosecutor argued that after Fernández’s defense no irregularities were detected, but he does not specify why.

According to Lijo’s decision, the prosecutor concluded that after analyzing the documentation provided by Fernández’s defense, it turned out that the reported events lacked “criminal relevance”.

Taiano said: “It is not possible to subsume the facts in the criminal type of illicit enrichment, since the [Fernández] he reliably justified the origin of the increase in shareholders’ equity declared in 2015 and, basically, he provided the relevant explanations concerning the variation noted by AFIP compared to the affidavit corresponding to the previous year ” .

The prosecutor added: “Fernández has constructed a probative map which presents a plausibility status which allows to consider the explanations invoked as proven and to exclude irregularities in its evolution of the patrimony.”

In the decision ordering the dismissal, Lijo wrote: “Sharing the arguments of the federal prosecutor, in that the defendant in his presentation responded to each of the ‘particularities’ indicated in the report of the Federal Revenue Administration; I understand that the events reported have no criminal relevance ”.

Fernández had denied in court that the content of driver Oscar Centeno’s annotations was true.

Although he still denies it, he had enormous influence in federal courts under the Kirchner governments. Ten years ago, its approval was decisive for the appointment of federal judges. One of Fernández’s closest judges is Luis Rodriguez, head of Federal Court No. 9. Fernández is the godfather of the judge’s daughter. Judge Luis Rodríguez’s son is currently working at AGN.

Fernández has appointed several relatives of judges and prosecutors from Comodoro Py to AGN over the past decade. For example, a daughter of the former federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, Malena, who worked at AGN with Fernández and then went to the wiretapping office. Secretary of Roberto Baratta, Nelson lazarteHe had also been hired by Fernández at AGN.

The brother of the federal maid also went through the audit Martin Irurzun, Alejandro, who led the systems management. And the son of the former chamber attorney Germán Moldes, Germán Manuel, who was in charge of the legal secretariat of the organization. The lawyer also occupied a lesser position there. Alfredo Lijo, brother of judge Ariel Lijo, accused by the former deputy Elisa Carrió influence peddling.

Antonio “Jaime ”Stiuso, ex-director of SIDE and undisputed leader of espionage for more than ten years, said in a court file that Javier Fernández was his man, referring to the episode in which, in 2011, a gang shot down the car Fernández was in, in the Colegiales neighborhood. Despite the past confrontation between Cristina Kirchner and Stiuso, Fernández is still a representative of Peronism at AGN.