( Spanish) — Seven years after his indictment, the Vice President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was dismissed in the money laundering case in which the businessman Lázaro Báez was convicted. The decision was made by federal judge Sebastián Casanello due to the lack of accusation by the prosecution and the complaints.
According to the resolution to which had access, the judge ordered the dismissal after the prosecutor in the case, Guillermo Marijuan, withdrew his accusation against the vice president “after receiving a report prepared by the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Complex Crimes and Organized Crime and confirm, from there, an event considered by the decision maker: the meeting at the end of 2010 in Quinta de Olivos, where the businessman (Lázaro Báez), when questioned by the then president, denies and hides the illegal expatriation of capital that it had been making at that time”.
In judicial terms, the dismissal of the criminal proceedings without reaching a resolution on the merits.
Casanello emphasized Marijuan’s decision, and in his resolution he states that “after considering the evidence measures exhausted, he closed the investigation opened seven years ago to determine whether the former president had participated in the money laundering operations attributed in this causes Lázaro Báez and his entourage”.
In April 2016, the prosecutor Marijuan had charged the now vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, among others, for the crime of money laundering in an investigation that had Báez as the main suspect. Kirchner, who served as Argentina’s president for eight years, had just completed her second term in December 2015.
Báez had been accused of laundering money for millions of dollars in dollars from tax evasion by his construction company Austral Construcciones through the SGI financial cave, known as “La Rosadita.”
Casanello made the decision, seven years ago, to impute Fernández de Kirchner for the statement of the protected witness Leonardo Fariña, for his alleged collaboration with the businessman Báez in the transfer of suitcases with millions of dollars.