In the last few hours, the leak of a chat between judges officials, officials and members of Grupo Clarín, to try to justify a private trip to the mansion of British magnate Joe Lewis, in Lago Escondido.
The judges and officials who were invited by Grupo Clarín to the mansion, tried to plant evidence and invent alibis to hide the truth, after Página/12 and El Destape made public in mid-October the trip between the magistrates and the businessmen.
After that, the judges and others involved created two groups on Telegram named: “Operation Page 12”, through which they discussed how to justify that each of the guests had paid for the private trip to Bariloche. The first group was created on October 17, after the first publication appeared in the media; the second, on the 20th of the same month.
The groups created by Pablo Casey, director of Legal and Institutional Affairs of Grupo Clarín, are made up of the CEO of that business group, Jorge Rendo; the judges Pablo Yadarola, Julián Ercolini, Pablo Cayssials and Carlos “Coco” Mahiques; the Minister of Security of CABA, Marcelo D’Alessandro, and the former head of Legal of the SIDE, Leonardo Bergroth.
In the chats that were published by the newspaper Tiempo Argentino and the portal “El Cohete a la Luna”, it can be seen how those involved agree on a response strategy to the publication about the trip, which included, among other things, giving a new version of events to some media and pressure others to remain silent.
It should be remembered that, after learning about the trip to Lago Escondido, the Magistracy Council filed a complaint by criminal Luciano Almonacid for “poor performance of their duties” against Ercolini, Mahiques, Cayssials and Yadarola, who were accused “of breaching rules constitutional, legal and regulatory and incur in serious conduct disorders” for receiving gifts.
In this sense, the magistrates they would seek, by creating a false justification for the trip, to prevent the complaint from prospering. To do this, those involved even propose to buy receipts or invoices to argue that the trip was not a gift.
What some messages say
What was leaked shows how, especially Ercolini and Yadarola, seek to justify the trip. “Difficult to explain that we all went somewhere else together without leaving loose ends,” Ercolini acknowledged, to which his colleague Cayssials proposes: “I can get a house that we went to in Bariloche. It belongs to a friend who can say that he lent it to us. By the way, if you want, next month we really go there and we take pictures with him there and we close everything.”
Ercolini replies: “If that were achieved, all that remains is the idea of collusion, which is nothingness itself. Unless they have more.” For his part, Yadarola pointed directly to the head of the PSA, José Glinski, “They do not do that without an order from the political leadership, José Glinski, to write it down, because he is responsible.
In this regard, the Buenos Aires minister D’Alessandro told the group: “If at any time I had to be a minister of the Nation, the first thing I would do is dissolve the PSA.” And he adds: “Give me the pleasure of going to look for him with one of our patrolmen and I’ll make him shit.”
