The trial in the Vialidad case for alleged crimes with public works in Santa Cruz resumed with the second day of the last argument that the Court will hearin the final stretch of the debate that follows 13 defendants, including Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The hearing began with the argument of the lawyer Miguel Arce Ageo, for the defense of the former highway officials of the province of Santa Cruz Juan Carlos Villafañe and Raúl Santibañezwho will make use of three days assigned by the Federal Oral Court 2 and will end next Monday.
“The prosecutors could not prove the objective imputation for fraudulent administration and it was clearly demonstrated that the funds administered by the president of the AGVP were provincial funds. Neither could the damage required by the crime be proven in the provincial or national funds” , summarized Arce Ageo.
In that sense, he considered that “the fraudulent administration is disrupted”, one of the crimes that is part of the accusation.
“We are operating under the institutional framework of a democratic regime, so the province is completely separated from the Nation in terms of managing funds. There can be no pyramid scheme”
“We are operating under the institutional framework of a democratic regime, so the province is completely separated from the Nation in terms of managing funds. There can be no pyramidal fraud,” as the prosecutors accuse, added the defender.
He also argued that the National Highway Administration, through the 23rd district based in Santa Cruz, “supervised all the certificates” of work and therefore “it is clearly understood that the contracts were not created as a barrier of impunity.”
Arce Aggeo anticipated that will request acquittals because in the case the prosecution made “monstrous accusations”, of an “unreal” nature without having proven any “patrimonial damage” to the State.
The lawyer will close the arguments stage in the debate that judges alleged overpricing, addressing and non-delivery in 51 public road works awarded to “Austral Construcciones”, a company of the also accused businessman Lázaro Báez between 2003 and 2015.
Prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola made “an erroneous construction” of the accusations in their “profuse allegation”Arce Ageo added at the hearing last Tuesday, the first of his argument that will conclude next Monday
The lawyer, together with Villafañe and Santibañez, went in person to the federal courts of Retiro, in the courtroom where the members of the Court, Jorge Gorini, Andrés Basso and Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu, were also present.
The remaining parties continue the debate by videoconference and, with the completion of this plea, which will take place next week, the final stage of the trial will be entered with the prosecutor’s response to the claims of annulment made by the defenders.
Then, the stage of reply to the arguments of the defenses by the prosecution would follow, if it is resolved that there is one.
Finally, the Court will set a schedule for the defendants to give their last words before the verdict.
