The Argentine justice system has found messages that would indicate alleged physical abuse by former President Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) towards his ex-partner Fabiola Yañez, within the framework of an investigation into alleged influence peddling by the former president, according to several local media outlets, including the Clarín newspaper on its front page this Sunday.
On the cell phone of the former president’s secretary, María Cantero, the Justice Department found photographs of Yañez with signs of violence on her body, and text and audio chats in which the then first lady accuses Fernández of those alleged blows perpetrated in the presidential residence, in the town of Olivos, province of Buenos Aires, according to local press reports.
The dialogues, messages and photos are from different times, Clarín reported, including when Yañez was pregnant with her son Francisco, who was born on April 11, 2022.
The contents of Cantero’s cell phone, from 2019 until this year, were extracted as part of an investigation into alleged corruption surrounding the contracting of insurance by public bodies during the Fernández government.
Fernández is being investigated for alleged irregularities in a decree he signed in December 2021, by which he ordered that all public bodies must take out insurance with Nación Seguros, owned by the state-owned Banco Nación, from which friends of the former president would have benefited as intermediaries by charging millionaire commissions.
Despite not needing agents to contract these insurance policies, the public agencies used as an intermediary the husband of their secretary and his friend, Héctor Martínez Sosa, who also appears as a creditor of the former president in his sworn declarations.
On Sunday, Clarín did not release any images or dialogues that could re-victimize Yañez.
The press claims that on Cantero’s phone there were four photos of the former first lady – one with one eye and part of the upper jaw swollen due to alleged blows and another with bruises on the entire right side of her torso, with her ribs and armpit bruised – and a video in which a person identifiable as Fernández is seen in an allegedly violent attitude towards Yañez.
Federal judge Julián Ercolini, who is handling the insurance case, opened a confidential file in the case last June, according to Clarín, which he decided to share with the Office of Gender Violence of the Argentine Supreme Court, which requested to summon Yañez, who lives in Spain with her son.
Ercolini and a lawyer who has advised Fernández, Juan Pablo Fioribello, informed Yañez electronically of the evidence that would indicate the possible commission of the crime of minor injuries in the context of gender violence, reported Clarín, but the former first lady responded that she has no intention of traveling to Argentina to file the complaint, so the case was archived.
Fioribello told Clarín that he had “spoken personally with the former president regarding this issue,” and that Fernández “categorically denied any incident of physical violence.”
Buenos Aires / EFE
#Justice #evidence #gender #violence #Alberto #Fernández #Argentine #press
2024-08-08 02:10:04
