2023-04-27 03:41:45
María Eugenia Vidal has not yet notified if she will drop the candidacy for the Presidency, but the Justice has just given her a warning call. The National Electoral Chamber confirmed a resolution by electoral judge Alejo Ramos Padilla who had disapproved of the accountability of campaign expenses made by Cambiemos in the 2017 legislative primaries. It is another twist (now in the highest instance) of the cause known as “trucho contributors”, which began to be aired in 2018. In addition to being governor, Vidal was the president of the PRO at the Buenos Aires level.
At that time, after an investigation by journalist Juan Amorin, it became clear that Cambiemos used presumed contributors who were not in a financial position to deliver the amounts that appeared in the records. Others directly did not contribute. Their names were used without permission. Amorin detected 800 matching identities with beneficiaries of Anses plans.
“This is a scam and it is money laundering,” Roberto Daniel García, a councilor from Avellaneda who was a PRO leader for 14 years, told Página/12 at the time.
Another key was the activities of the then PRO treasurer, María Fernanda Inza, responsible for campaign contributions. Vidal also promoted her as general accountant of the Province, a key advisory and internal control position. Inza lasted only one week in the position. It was the fuse that Vidal had to burn so that her discharge did not reach her fully.
The federal judge of La Plata Ernesto Kreplak intervened, who subrogated the vacant electoral court at that time, and later took up the matter Ramos Padilla, in office since 2021.
In this new chapter of history, the Chamber, made up of Santiago Corcuera, Alberto Dalla Vía and Daniel Bejas, has just decided that “the pertinent actions continue, in order to determine any possible personal responsibilities that may correspond in accordance with the established procedure in articles 146 and concordant of the National Electoral Code”.
Article 146 says that “if within the framework of the processes provided for in the electoral laws, the possible commission of a crime typified in the Penal Code or its complementary laws is evidenced or denounced, its investigation will be in charge of the federal judge with competence corresponding electoral.
In other words, in the first part of the procedure, Ramos Padilla investigated the facts and stuck to the only thing that corresponded to him: not to determine if there was a crime but to analyze, as he said in his own text of February 2022, if Cambiemos had managed to “prove , in a transparent manner, the origin and destination of the funds that were assigned to it, as well as the money that was provided through private contributions.”
Ramos Padilla concluded that the surrender had irregularities and submitted the file to the National Electoral Chamber, which accepted his objections and now returns the papers to investigate the possible commission of criminal offenses.
At the time, the judge disapproved the final reports of resources and expenses of the Cambiemos Buenos Aires alliance for the primary election of August 13, 2017, corresponding to the categories of national deputies and national senators.
It also ordered sanctioning the Cambiemos parties with fines.
The PRO had to pay $3,246,965.53. The UCR, $990,599.65. The Civic Coalition, $990,599.65. There were also smaller fines for the Progressive Democratic Party, the Popular Conservative Party, the Democratic Party, the Union of the Democratic Center, the Open Space for Development and Social Integration, the Faith Party, the Dialogue Party, and the Social Movement for Republic.
The disapproval of the surrender of Cambiemos by Ramos Padilla was due to “the numerous irregularities linked to private contributors.”
The ruling of the National Electoral Chamber, to which this newspaper had access, endorses the judge’s investigation, especially in relation to “people who denied making the contribution that the group had reported.” It rescues that Ramos Padilla obtained testimony from 98 people he called. Of them, “47 criminally denounced their appearance as campaign contributors (…) and the remaining 49 were summoned before this Court to formulate the expression of consent for private contributions.” One part, 19, received social plans. Of the 19, “except for two people, the rest denied having made campaign contributions.” For the Chamber, the investigation on monotributistas whose contribution “exceeded the average monthly billing limit” is well carried out, especially when one party denied having contributed anything.
Elsewhere, the ruling recalls that Cambiemos submitted rectifications to the lists of contributors to the court but did not justify why it was necessary for them to exclude 1,500 contributors and add another 322. This last group lacked receipts. Accepting this maneuver would have meant setting a precedent: it would be enough to make new people appear as contributors and exclude those who “mistakenly excluded themselves”. It would be a violation of the spirit of the law.
Point number 10 of the ruling states that “the circumstances set forth show that the senior judge –in light of the uncritical judgment– carried out an effective assessment of the evidence gathered for the resolution of the case, as well as as well as the conclusions of the expert auditor”.
As Cambiemos appealed, the National Electoral Chamber believes that “the appellants do not provide valid elements” against the resolution of Ramos Padilla.
The chambermaids go into other substantive issues. They say that the scope of the term ” ” to which the regulations allude “should be interpreted in the sense of subjecting the accounts of political parties to effective control — and not in that of giving mere news about them, otherwise such This requirement would be empty of content–, which constitutes a principle that cannot be ignored without affecting the control of acts of government inherent to the republican system”.
Transparency serves voters, according to the ruling, not only to find out if there could have been any act of corruption but “to know the interests with which (a candidate) identifies and detect any post-electoral favor in return.”
In another part, he endorses the conclusions of Ramos Padilla when he said that “the group did not correct the observations made regarding expenses on public roads and on the Internet, mindful that it did not make comments or provide detailed information on guidelines or the media. hired”.
One of the irregularities would have been related to posters of Verdad Publicidad Sociedad Anónima, with images of Graciela Ocaña and “Toty” Flores at kilometer 8 of the Buenos Aires-La Plata highway.
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