The federal judge of La Plata, Ernesto Kreplak, will take this week an investigative statement from the last two former officials of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) who attended the a meeting at the Buenos Aires headquarters of Banco Provincia on June 15, 2017, in which there was talk of promoting legal cases against the trade unionist Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina.
Those cited are the former director of Legal Affairs of the agency Juan Sebastian Destefanofor next Tuesday, March 29, and the former director of Counterintelligence Diego Dalmau Pereyrafor the 31st of that same month.
Both were already relieved of their obligation to keep secret.
The first former AFI official to be questioned was Dario Biorci, the former deputy chief of staff in the management of Gustavo Arribas as head and Silvia Majdalani as second in the intelligence agency during the presidency of Mauricio Macri
Biorci appeared last Friday in the court of La Plata and, in a brief investigation process, he refused to testify and only stated for the record that he was present that day at the Banco Provincia headquarters in the meeting with businessmen from the construction of La Plata and officials of the then governor of Buenos Aires Maria Eugenia Vidal.
With Dalmau Pereyra’s investigative statement, the list of citations ordered in February by the magistrate will conclude, although that of provincial senator Juan Pablo Allan will have to be rescheduled, suspended pending resolution of a request for immunity.
Kreplak has already investigated 13 of the 14 defendants, all those attending that meeting at the bank that was recorded by the AFI and whose records were found by the agency’s current comptroller, Cristina Caamaño, who filed the criminal complaint.
The businessmen who attended the meeting submitted briefs and, for the most part, refused to answer questions.
In their defenses they agreed that they were summoned by the then Buenos Aires Minister of Labor Marcelo Villegas, the first defendant in the case, to an “institutional” meeting, that they did not know that you were being recorded and that they did not know everyone present.
“Believe me that if I could have – and I am going to deny this to you anywhere – if I could have a Gestapo, an onslaught force to end all unions, I would do it,” Villegas was heard saying in the filming of the encounter.
The content of that video, apparently recorded without the consent of those who attended that meeting, is now being investigated as part of an alleged illegal setup to harm Medina and other leaders of Uocra La Plata.
The businessmen already investigated are Ricardo Alconada Magliano, Guillermo Moretto, Jorge Oscar Del Río, Fabián Cusini, Bernardo Zaslascky and Marcelo Jaworski.
What’s more The former Villegas officials, the former Minister of Provincial Infrastructure Roberto Gigante, the former Undersecretary of Justice Adrián Grassi and the mayor of La Plata, Julio Garro, were investigated.
The file investigates the alleged construction of cases against trade unionists, but also possible violations of the intelligence law given that AFI spies participated in that meeting that was illegally recorded.
The case investigates “the design and implementation of a strategy -decided or authorized at higher levels of the national and provincial government- aimed at prosecuting the situation of the existing conflict around the actions of Uocra la Plata sectional or its Secretary General and relatives”, during the year 2017, as it appears from the file.
In this context, “various legally prohibited intelligence activities would have taken place, such as carrying out field tasks and consulting various databases without a court order enabling it by agents of the Federal national intelligence agency whose product was later used by officials of that same agency for the generation of reports”.
