The president of the board of directors of the oil company Vicentin SAIC, Omar Adolfo Scarel, was arrested this Monday by order of the Justice of Santa Fe in the city of Avellaneda, in the north of the province, within the framework of a case that investigates the sale of shares of the Renova company that were protected by the Justice, informed judicial sources.
Scarel’s arrest took place in Avellaneda, some 330 kilometers north of the city of Santa Fe, where Vicentin also has its headquarters, and in the next few hours he will be transferred to Rosario, where the indictment hearing will take place on Wednesday.
After learning of the arrest, carried out by agents of the Intelligence Division of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) of the Santa Fe policethe company issued a statement in which it maintained that “there is no reasonable argument to justify a measure of this gravity.”
In addition to the arrest of Scarel, the Unit for Economic and Complex Crimes of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPA) of Rosario ordered raids on the offices of the Viterra company, which shares Renova’s share package with Vicentin.
Sources said the Prosecutor Miguel Moreno investigates Scarel for maneuvers carried out before occupying the presidency of Vicentin, when he was the firm’s accountant.
Among other actions, he blames him for having prepared and used annual balance sheets closing in October 2017 and October 2018 with false data that hid the true numbers of the company.
He is also accused of having submitted reports to international banks with the intention of showing that Vicentin had a solid financial position to obtain credit.
These maneuvers would have been presumably carried out by Scarel between January 2017 and July 2019 and would have allowed the oil company to obtain credits for US$500 million.
The first reaction of the company was to disqualify the action of the Justice of Santa Fe.
Through a statement they said that “it is absolutely false” that the company has “broken these restrictions and all bankruptcy agreements reached so far.”
The press release denies that there has been a “breach or disobedience of a precautionary measure issued, which establishes restrictions on possible sales of assets or shares of the company.” Vicentin pointed out that those agreements “They are in pre-contractual instances ad referendum of the respective judicial approvals and of the lifting of the precautionary measures filed”
“Mr. Scarel, like all the members of the board of directors of Vicentin SAIC charged in the case, have always been in the right, at the disposal of justice and have provided their collaboration whenever it has been required,” the text added.
In addition, they emphasized that “it is very striking that this fact (the arrest) occurs when the majority of the population necessary to approve the bankruptcy proposal has been reached and when the competition is close to being resolved with the approval of the financial entities, in order to reach the majority necessary in terms of the required capital”.
Scarel’s arrest occurs in the context of Vicentin’s serious financial difficulties, which even led the national government to intervene temporarily in June 2020, in part because Banco Nación was one of the main creditors for loans granted during the presidency of Mauricio Macri.
