federal prosecutor Ramiro Gonzalez will be in charge the investigation for “disobedience” contra Alberto Fernandez, accused of having failed to comply with an order of the Supreme Court. The complaint once morest the President was drawn this morning and it fell to the federal judge Daniel Rafecas, who delegated it to the prosecutor. Rafecas was the candidate that Fernández proposed for the Attorney General of the Nation, but the Senate never approved his nomination.
In recent days, several complaints have been filed once morest the President, following he announced that he was going to breach the precautionary measure of the Supreme Court that ordered him to increase the co-participation percentage that corresponds to the city of Buenos Aires. Today, the Government took a turn: the President published a thread of tweets in which he once more questioned the ruling, but announced measures with which he shows signs of intending to comply with it. He said that he had given instructions to reallocate “the only resources available for the year 2022 ″ and transfer them “to a Banco Nación account in the name of the GCBA ”. Also, that he will send to Congress “a bill to be dealt with in extraordinary sessions, which provides for the budgetary resources necessary to make it possible to comply with the legal mandate.”
According to judicial sources, the complaint once morest Rafecas was the first to reach the courts of Comodoro Py and, therefore, the others will be added to it. In principle, prosecutor González will investigate all of them.
A judicial source involved in the case warned today that the task that the prosecutor will now carry out resembles a “preparatory criminal investigation”, prior to the criminal investigation itself, because “the facts denounced are still in an embryonic stage, with proposals and pending notifications”. Today’s announcement by Alberto Fernández reinforces this idea.
Sources from the Public Ministry said that the first thing to do is confirm if the ruling is firm and if compliance is already enforceable. Prosecutor González, to whom Rafecas delegated the case, is on leave this week. If it were appropriate to take any measure now, it should be done by the person who is replacing him, who is the prosecutor Carlos Rívolo.
Both the Buenos Aires and the national governments also announced that they will make presentations in the Supreme Court as a result of last week’s ruling. Gabriel Astarloa, the City Treasury Attorney, prepares a brief, which he would present today, to ask the Court to require the Government to start making money transfers as ordered by the Court’s ruling (with an increase for reach 2.95% co-participation for the City). At the Casa Rosada they are working on another presentation that materializes what the President announced: the recusal of the four Supreme Court judges and a proposal for “revocation in extremis” so that the court itself annuls the precautionary measure it issued.
Today, Rafecas is in charge of two of the 12 federal courts in Comodoro Py: number 3, of which he is the head, and number 6, a court that substitutes because it has not had a judge since the departure of Rodolfo Canicoba Corral. The complaint once morest the President, by lottery, was assigned to 6.
Three years ago, Alberto Fernández chose Rafecas as a candidate to occupy the Office of the Attorney General of the Nation, vacant since the resignation of Alejandra Gils Carbó and in the hands, since then, of the prosecutor Eduardo Casal, who is the deputy attorney. But Rafecas never obtained the agreement of the Senate, necessary to assume the position.
First, it was resisted by sectors of the opposition, but later it was Kirchnerism that withdrew its support. The trigger was Rafecas’s announcement that he would not take office if they reformed the law -as the ruling party wanted- to make the majority necessary to appoint him more flexible. “If halfway through the process for my appointment the majority required in the Senate to appoint the attorney is reduced by law, that will be an insurmountable ethical limit for me, which will make it impossible for me to go ahead with the application. I respect other positions, but this is my conviction, ethical and legal”, Rafecas announced in 2021. Despite this, Kirchnerism went ahead with its plan to reform the law, but it did not obtain the necessary votes and the initiative was cut short. The position of Procurator has already been vacant for five years.
THE NATION
