The Federal judge Julián Ercolini sent the false lawyer Marcelo D’Alessio to oral trial on Thursdaythe suspended prosecutor of Mercedes Juan Ignacio Bidone and nine others prosecuted in the case for extortion, illegal espionage and money laundering that until the end of last year was investigated in Dolores.
The magistrate was in charge of the case when it passed from the federal jurisdiction of Dolores to Comodoro Py and now partially closed the investigation into ten acts of extortion and illegal espionage and money laundering maneuvers and sent it to an Oral Court draw, according to the 48-page resolution to which Télam had access.
As part of the investigation that follows in court a decision on sending other defendants to trial was pending, among them the Buenos Aires federal prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, because there are still appeals pending resolution in instances of appeal.
Judge rejected requests for dismissal of the defense of D’Alessio and other defendants and terminated the investigation into the extortion maneuvers suffered by a plaintiff businessman, Pedro Etchebest, and nine other events.
Etchebest was the one who with his complaint began the investigation in the federal court of Dolores.
The imputations
The defendants are charged “having been part of an illicit association that, on an uncertain date but at least from 2016 to February 2019, planned and, in certain cases, executed -without having the power to do so or an order from a competent authority- research activities, collection, classification, ordering, storage and analysis of information linked to people, the evolution of legal cases and members of the mass media”.
In parallel, “the organization carried out extortion, intimidation and/or coercive maneuvers.”
In the specific case of the then-prosecutor of Mercedes Bidone, “he provided the criminal organization with information only accessible to public bodies regarding immigration records and telephone communications, which was later used in the framework of the various maneuvers devised.”
Ercolini gave course to request for elevation made in 2020 by the then prosecutor of the case in Dolores, Juan Pablo Curi and highlighted the need to move towards the oral trial stage “especially considering that some of the accused are deprived of their liberty.”
D’Alessio has been imprisoned in the Ezeiza prison since February 15, 2019 and he was already sentenced last year in the first trial that faced another businessman, Gabriel Traficante, for extortion, to four years in prison while the prosecutor Bidone received the sentence of 3 years and 8 months in prison, in a verdict under study now of the Federal Chamber of Cassation.
In the case that has just been sent to trial in an oral court in Comodoro Py, there are two former agents of the Federal Intelligence Agency under house arrest and another defendant, Aldo Sánchez, detained in the Marcos Paz prison.
Those sent to trial are D’Alessio, Bidone, two former AFI agents whose identity is being preserved, Sánchez, Pablo Bloise, Marcelo Carthy de Gorritti, Mariano Diaz, Eduardo Menchi, Naval Prefecture officer Franco Pini and former Police Commissioner Norberto Degastaldi from Buenos Aires.
One of the accusations of extortion against D’Alessio revolves around the businessman Etchebest, who “would have illegitimately demanded” and “on behalf of federal prosecutor Carlos Ernesto Stornelli” the payment of 300,000 dollars in exchange for “not being involved” in the case known as “Notebooks” between January and February 2019.
In another case, D’Alessio is accused of being part of the illicit association that he headed, according to the accusation, “in the face of an alleged request made by Carlos Stornelli, information gathering tasks regarding Jorge Christian Castanon”, a former pilot of the wife of the Buenos Aires prosecutor.
“Marcelo Sebastián D’Alessio is also accused of having developed, within the framework of the illicit association, information gathering tasks -identified by the Provincial Commission for Memory as “counterintelligence”-, in relation to Natacha Jaitt and Mirtha Legrand, as well as Messrs. Eduardo Miragaya, Ignacio Viale, Raúl Martins, Gustavo Vera and Gabriel Anello”, lists the request for elevation to a fiscal trial.
On the accusation of money laundering they will go to trial the members of a group called “Buenos Aires” on the WhatsApp messaging network made up of D’Alessio, Bloise, Gorritti, Sánchez and a former AFI agent.
All would have been part between March and December 2018 of “a criminal organization dedicated to negotiating, coordinating and arranging international financial operations several times million in US dollars or euros, involving funds of illicit origin, which was intended to be concealed through a scheme especially designed to enter the money in the legal market and make it difficult to trace those assets”.
