Federal prosecutor Franco Picardi charged former president Mauricio Macri as allegedly responsible for the assembly of a “systematic plan” of illegal espionage during his government that would have had among the victims people in whom he had a personal interest such as his main opponent, then-senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and her sister Florencia Macri.
It did so by requiring oral and public trial of the case investigating the alleged illegal espionage deployed in 2018 on the home of the current vice president and the Patria Institute, for which Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani, former heads of the Agency, are being prosecuted. Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) during the government of Cambiemos.
The prosecutor presented an opinion of more than 200 pages to the federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi in which he maintained that, in his opinion, the investigation into the participation of Arribas, Majdalani and two other people from the AFI in the events under investigation has been concluded, for which he his elevation to trial and at the same time asked to advance with the investigation of the possible responsibility of Macri, among others.
“The maneuvers revealed in this case have not been exceptional or isolated.; Rather, they make up a set of many other criminal cases -several of which are filed before the Court in charge of them for reasons of connection- whose objectives are limited to the investigation of intelligence actions deployed” by AFI agents between 2016 and 2019, the prosecutor said.
“What they have in common, a priori, is the suspicion of intervention by the highest authorities of the Agency, within the framework of the planning, coordination and execution of tasks prohibited by Law 25,520, with contact points that refer to the victims. or targets of such illegal intelligence actions,” Picardi said.
In a subsequent paragraph, the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office pointed out that these “extremes could be demonstrative of the illegal use of intelligence tools as part of systematic plans orchestrated by the state apparatus itself.”
More arguments from the prosecutor
“These circumstances require deepening the investigations carried out so far in the direction indicated, through the global and appropriate analysis of the multiple existing judicial interventions for acts of the same characteristics, traceable to the same management of the AFI,” said the prosecutor before claiming that testimonies be extracted to evaluate the possible participation of other people.
In a separate presentation, in which he specifically referred to this alleged “extraction of testimonials”the prosecutor assured that due to the multiplicity of cases opened for cases of alleged illegal espionage during the management of Cambiemos “It is necessary to inquire about the role played in the aforementioned organized scheme by the person who was the immediate superior of the accused Arribas and Majdalani, the then President of the Nation, engineer Mauricio Macri”.
It also required investigating the role of “people who held public responsibilities and who acted in the direct service of the person named and could have served as a link or liaison for the transmission of orders and information related to illegal intelligence activities.”
In this context, he pointed outcases of alleged espionage in which the former president could have a personal interest, such as those that had as a victim his then main opponent, Senator Fernández de Kirchner; or those who had his sister Florencia Macri and his partner Salvatore Pice as spies or the journalist of the newspaper La Nación Hugo Alconada Mon.
In the case of Alconada Mon, the journalist himself mentioned that the alleged espionage tasks that had him as a victim occurred when he was investigating Macri’s brother, Gianfranco, for the case known as the Panama Papers, and his cousin Ángel Calcaterra, for the cause of the burial of the Sarmiento train.
On the other hand, when referring to the request to bring to trial the case for espionage at the home of the Vice President and at the Patria Institute building – the political headquarters of Kirchnerism -, the prosecutor maintained that there are no longer pending measures of evidence in relation to Arribas. , Majdalani, the head of Special Operations of the Counterintelligence Operational Directorate Alan Ruiz, and the head of that directorate, Martín Coste.
Arribas, Majdalani and Ruiz are being prosecuted for allegedly illegal espionage and ideological falsehood for having produced documents with allegedly false content to try to make the prohibited intelligence maneuvers legal, while Coste was charged solely for the production of those documents..
The illegal intelligence activities that were deployed in that case “were carried out under two particular modalities: on the one hand, during the day, AFI agents appeared at the aforementioned addresses to carry out observations, surveillance, records and storage and , on the other hand, during the night, technical cars (vehicles with non-visible cameras that film continuously) were parked in the vicinity of the addresses in question, “said the prosecutor.
“We had to go to install a service in a Recoleta address with a vehicle and determine if there was movement of people or boxes or bags entering or leaving it”reported in that case a witness with a reserved identity, as stated in the opinion to which Télam had access.
These maneuvers tried to be justified before the Bicameral Intelligence Commission first and before the justice system later. as tasks linked to the possibility that the then senator was the target of an attack within the framework of the G20 international summit held in the City of Buenos Aires in those days.
Arribas and Majdalani “created an inorganic Directorate of Special Operations to which they assigned resources, cars, an office and appointed Alan Ruiz as director there,” the prosecutor maintained, and later asserted that the former heads of the AFI had a “direct and without intermediaries” with that official, so “there were no rank rules in this relationship within the AFI.”
“Ruiz served as a link between the decision of the highest authorities of the AFI to carry out illegal intelligence tasks against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner -Arribas and Majdalani- and the realization of said tasks carried out by street agents of the AFI of hierarchical positions Why? Because he was a trusted person of both, due to his previous links “since” he came from the Ministry of Security of the Nation, at that time in charge of Patricia Bullrich, “said the prosecutor.
Picardi also noted that during the Macri government, AFI funds were returned to the reserved character, which gave that body “opacity” to eventually deploy the investigated maneuvers.
The espionage case dates back to 2020
The case for the alleged espionage of the Patria Institute began on February 20, 2020 from the complaint articulated by the then AFI Comptroller, Cristina Caamaño, which was founded on the discovery of internal documents and specific statements by various agents. , who gave an account of alleged acts of illegal intelligence.
The case was processed first before the justice of Lomas de Zamora because the file was filed there in which it was investigated whether there were political leaders who could be the target of attacks by alleged anarchist groups before the G20 summit was imminent.
