Eight members of the Council of the Judiciary, including Judge Alberto Lugones and deputies Graciela Camaño and Vanesa Siley, sent a note to the directors of the newspaper Clarín to clarify the information in an article published by that medium on the opposition contest and background 475, initiated to designate a member of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, and the suitability to participate in the same of the federal judge of Mendoza, Walter Bento, who is prosecuted for the crime of illicit association.
In the statement, which was officially released by the directors themselves, it is noted that Bento’s authorization to participate in the contest is not the power of Deputy Siley as president of the Commission for the Selection of Magistrates and the Judicial School, but of the Commission as a whole, which it must decide whether to incorporate it or expel it in a meeting that has not yet been held and through the vote of its members, which are eight.
In addition, the response recalls that the Regulations for Public Competition Competitions and Background for the Appointment of Magistrates establish that “it will be the (Selection) Commission that will decide not to proceed with the registrations in the event that the applicant has firm criminal conviction for intentional crime or were subject to criminal proceedings pending for intentional crime in which a writ of indictment or its equivalent in the provincial Criminal Procedure Codes has been decreed, which is final”.
The councilors who sign the note are Lugones, Camaño, Siley, senators María Inés Pilatti Vergara (National and Popular, FdT) and Mariano Recalde (Citizen Unit-FdT), Gerónimo Ustarroz, Juan Manuel Culotta and Diego Molea, who in another paragraph detail the procedure carried out so far to select the chamberlain who will fill the vacancy in Chamber III, number 8 of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation.
In the note addressed to Clarín, it is highlighted that deputy Siley, as president of the Selection Commission, did not show in the case “any obturation or refusal to process the expulsion” of Bento from the background and selection contest that is underway. .
“We do not share the versions of it expressed in the reference note, and we clarify the suitability with which the correct functioning of the Commission has been carried out,” underlined the eight members of the Council of the Judiciary about Siley’s actions.
The background contest to select the magistrate who will fill the vacancy in Voucher 8 of Chamber III of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation received 96 interested applicants until 24:00 hours on April 8, including Bento.
For the dissemination of those registered together with their CVs, the criteria established by article 13 section “b” and 19 of the organization’s Contest Regulations were applied; In parallel, the period for submitting challenges was opened, which expires tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. and was published on Tuesday, April 12 through Resolution No. 94/22.
In the case of Bento, as with the other applicants, “a formal control of the requirements to be a judge of first instance or a chamberlain was carried out, that is, age, seniority in the title of lawyer and the criminal record report “, detailed the signatories.
And they added that the Mendoza magistrate “presented a certificate of recidivism”, which is in force, with “date April 4, 2022”, in which it is reported that “he has no criminal record”.
The note also mentions that within the framework of the challenge stage, counselor Ricardo Recondo, vice president of the Selection Commission, requested Bento’s exclusion for having issued an indictment against him.
Recondo’s presentation, they pointed out, “must be dealt with at the right time at the next meeting of the Selection Committee.”
