The Political Trial Commission of the Chamber of Deputies will advance with the first of the hearings in which testimonies from judges and judicial officials will be received, in a fundamental step for the substantiation of the process that is carried out against the four members of the Court Supreme Court, promoted by President Alberto Fernández and a dozen governors.
The president of the Commission, the official from Entre Ríos Carolina Gaillard, summoned the 31 members of the body for next Thursday, February 23 from 11, in a new parliamentary meeting since the process began, at the end of January.
To the extensive list of testimonies requested in the resolution approved on February 9, new names requested from both the ruling party and the opposition were added.
During the day last Thursday, The Frente de Todos, through deputy Rodolfo Tailhade, proposed that federal judges Alejo Ramos Padilla and Sebastián Ramos be incorporated into the list, as well as the federal prosecutor of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Juan Bautista Mahiques.
All of them were involved in the controversy that arose from the percentage of co-participating funds directed to the Buenos Aires district that the then president Mauricio Macri increased in 2016 and that years later the current head of state reduced, a controversy that reached the Supreme Court after a presentation by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
Judges Ramos and Ramos Padilla, who received complaints about the alleged collusion between the president of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, and the administration of the CityThey will attend the hearing next Thursday.
The two magistrates had in their hands the causes of the crossing of chats through the Telegram application held by Silvio Robles, Rosatti’s spokesman and main collaborator, and Marcelo D’Alessandro, Buenos Aires Minister of Justice and Security license, on the eve of the ruling on co-participation that benefited the Federal Capital.
The ruling party decided to move forward with this line of investigation despite the fact that Judge Sebastián Ramos ruled, in the first instance, that the messages between the two were obtained illegally and that, therefore, they should not be used as evidence.
Mahiques, who will attend the commission on Thursday, March 2, was summoned by Tailhade to testify about what happened on his last birthday, which D’Alessandro and Robles would have attended togetherby virtue of the leak of videos of that social gathering.
The appearance of these judicial officials should be ensured based on what is established by the commission’s regulations, read by Gaillard, which establishes that Witnesses who are summoned are obliged to appear and, if they refuse, they can be brought by the public force; while those with criminal charges may refuse to testify.
Neither are they obliged to declare those who hold the position of President and Vice President of the Nation. However, a motion by the head of the Federal Interblock, the Peronist Alejandro Rodríguez, to summon Alberto Fernández, who promoted the procedure in Congress, was rejected thanks to the majority that the Frente de Todos has in the Commission.
Although the focus of next Thursday’s meeting will be on the magistrates, a statement will also be taken from various judicial officials who work in the area of the Supreme Court.
The list approved by the deputies has the names of Christian Abrittaformer head of the Judicial Secretariat No. 5, currently non-existent in the organization chart of the Supreme Court; Sergio Ruben RomeroDeputy Director of Internal Management and Authorization, dependent on the General Secretariat for Administration; Silenio Romulo Cardenas Ponce Ruiz, of the Judicial Secretariat No. 2 Previsional; and Alexander Daniel Rodriguezof the Secretariat of Original Judgments.
Likewise, from Horacio Rosatti’s vocals they will be called Roberto Miguel Ángel Saggese and Adriana Norma Valinotti; while, at the proposal of the deputy of the Civic Coalition-ARI Paula Oliveto, a Mario Cimadevillaformer senator and former member of the Council of the Magistracy, within the framework of the impeachment request that this group – a member of Together for Change – promotes against Judge Ricardo Lorenzetti.
