Sandra is an administrative employee in an accounting firm from Monday to Friday, and on weekends she works as a telephone customer service. Upon entering the City Government website to renew her driver’s license, she discovered that she had several violations and that she had lost all the scoring points. She never knew why. To quickly get around the problem, she decided to pay them. But she would later discover that she had been fined for infractions that she did not commit. And she no longer had the right to defense. Sandra’s is a situation that is repeated daily, and goes unnoticed by thousands of people. Illegal speed cameras, fines with false data or forged signatures, are some of the components that make up the millionaire business of traffic violations in the City.
A report from the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI), to which Tiempo had access, identified numerous irregularities in radars (or cinemometers) that carried out the photographic taking of the patents, at least between 2019 and 2021, which calls into question the legality of the fines made in that period.
The report states that several radars were not enabled, due to the lack of legal calibration and verification deadlines. The intervention of the INTI is a mandatory requirement for the fine to be legal. If the verification is not certified and current, the violation is apocryphal. But for the offending person, finding the precise data of which radar was used for the fine, or who signed it, is not easy.
When you access the CABA website, only the photos taken by the radars appear available, but not the Infraction Records with all the required details and the traffic agent’s signature, as occurs in the rest of the jurisdictions that comply with the legislation. national.
There, on the same page, the voluntary payment is offered, or to go to a controller. When the voluntary payment of 50% of the infraction is made, it is not made clear that by paying that sum automatically, the person vouches for having committed the fault, and therefore therefore the deduction of scoring points. With four minor infractions, the entire score is lost and the driver’s license must be renewed.
Rita (who prefers not to give her identity for personal reasons, and is on her way to prosecute her situation), decided not to pay the fines, so they referred her to the controller, and there she accessed the details of the minutes. She thus managed to certify that four of the six faults were wrongly adjudicated. In the one cataloged as Q24499258 on Saturday 12/26/2020 at 10:47, the domain of the vehicle was not displayed in the photo. Another invalidated infraction was Q24521213 that occurred on Friday 1/8/2021 at 8 a.m. on Av. Intendente Cantilo km 9.86. The resolution declares the “non-existence of fault” because the INTI report shows that the radar verification had expired. The third fine that invalidated him, Q25837881, occurred on Sunday 3/14/2021 at 02:50 on Av. Gral. Paz km. 4.3 was due to “no fault”: the place that appears in the photo does not coincide with the installation of the radar authorized by INTI. According to the report, between January 3 and April 6, 2021, the NEO_008 radar (at Av. Cantilo km. 9.8) was not controlled, so all the fines issued with that device would be null.
Premium
“Regarding traffic regulations, Argentina is governed by National Law No. 24,449 and its amendments. In the City, through Law 2148 (of 2006), the Traffic and Transportation Code was approved and adhered to the system established by the Nation”, explains Lucas Figola, lawyer, graduated in Public Management and specialist in State law and in Administrative Contracts. The City, in turn, has its own regulations to establish the penalties for the Code, which in addition to the economic penalty implies the possible loss of the license.
“The criterion to establish the value of the fines is the Fixed Unit (UF). This value changed as of March 2022 and is taken according to the average price in the City of a half liter of premium gasoline, according to the survey of the General Directorate of Statistics and Censuses. Today it reached $58.37 for each Fixed Unit”, details the lawyer. Considering that the prices of the infractions oscillate between 50 and 4000 UF, the City can charge fines of more than 230 thousand pesos, depending on the seriousness of the case.
Verification Acts (as they are called) have strict requirements that must be met to be valid. A badly drafted Act or with deficiencies is unenforceable against the offender; is legally ineffective. In addition, failure to notify violates the right to defense and due process.
The alleged offender should have 40 days to request his invalidity in the discharge. “I have had fines that gave me the previous address, not the current one where they send me the ABL, the patents and all the taxes; but those of the fines were sent to me without a floor or apartment number and with a non-existent postal code, which was 999. Like me, thousands of people never found out about the infractions because they never received them, and therefore we could not do the I download”, testifies Rita in Time. By refusing to pay what they said they owed and claim the Verification Acts, it found that they failed to comply with different requirements of article 3 of Law 1217, such as the identification, position and handwritten or digital signature of the official who verified the infringement. (see box)
Law 1217 of CABA, known as Misdemeanor Procedure, establishes the obligations of the authorities to verify a traffic fine. They have the duty to send the Acts of Verification of faults within 20 days so that they are notified to the alleged offender; and the Administrative Authority has the obligation to notify the alleged offender of the fines issued within 60 calendar days. When Rita had them in her possession, they were between 14 and 19 months old. The elapsed time prevented any possibility of corroborating the situations indicated in the minutes. But in addition, they deprived him of her defense, by not respecting the 20 days for the start of the administrative actions, nor the 60 days for the summons. In addition, they notified her at the same time that the hearing with the controller should be held. «
Violations validated by apocryphal agents
Article 3 of Law 1217 mentions as “Requirements of the infringement record”, which has to be drawn up by an official and contain other additional data: Rita’s fine Q24499258 of Saturday 12/26/2020 at 10:47 was signed by Lucas Derghazarian, road safety traffic officer. According to the Official Gazette, he was appointed from January 1 to 31, 2020 on the day-weekend shift. He could never have signed the verification act. The infraction Q24521213 “committed” on Friday 8/1/2021 at 8:00 appears with the signature of Fernando Gabriel Díaz. According to the Official Gazette, he was appointed in 2019. During 2021 he served in Human Resources Administration. He was no longer a Traffic Agent. Another example: the infraction Q25837881 dated Sunday 3/14/2021 at 2:50 a.m. appears with the data of the agent Alejandra Beatriz García. According to the Official Gazette, she was appointed in 2019. During 2021, she provided services in Human Resources.
Antecedent
Between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, the Buenos Aires government sent fines for non-existent offenses to two thousand citizens from all over the country. None had been to the place where they were reported, many had not even been to CABA. One case was Diamante, in Entre Ríos, where more than 50 neighbors had been notified. At that time, Paolo Favotti, Judge of Misdemeanors, declared: “In most cases, irregularities were reflected in the procedures. There is a case of a neighbor who has a Fiat 600, it is impossible for him to have entered Buenos Aires, another neighbor has the vehicle’s engine under repair.
