On Wednesday, March 8, the next Criminal and Economic Oral Court Number 1 will begin the trial for the entry of $790,550 brought by the Venezuelan-American businessman, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, on a private flight hired by Enarsa and which was detected by the police. of airport security at the metropolitan airport in August 2007.
In the dock of the accused will be the former Minister of Planning Julio De Vido; the former head of the Road Concessions Control Body, Claudio Uberti; and the then head of Customs, Ricardo Echegaray, all accused of the crime of aggravated smuggling during the exercise of public function.
The incident dates back to August 4, 2007, when the aircraft from Caracas arrived at the southern terminal of private flights of the metropolitan airport at dawn. For the PSA officer and discoverer of the money, María Luján Telpuk, arrivals at that time were totally unusual.
Along with Antonini Wilson disembarked: Diego Uzcátegui, then number 2 of PDVSA and his son Daniel; Claudio Uberti, former head of Occovi, his secretary Victoria Bereziuk as well as three second-line officials of the Venezuelan state oil company at that time.
The Venezuelan businessman entered Argentina with almost 800 thousand dollars
They all went to Buenos Aires to participate in the presidential summit between Néstor Kirchner and Hugo Chávez with no lesser political framework: it was yet to be defined who was going to be a presidential candidate, if Néstor or Cristina, at a time when the polls gave Kirchnerism as the winner.
Two days after the discovery, the meeting of the leaders was held at Balcarce 50, in which officials and businessmen from both countries participated. Sources of the investigation that Antonini entered thanks to José María Olazagasti, former private secretary and right-hand man of Julio De Vido. The images that confirmed the presence of the “valijero” in Casa Rosada sparked an international scandal.
The cause spent fourteen years in investigation and was in the hands of several judges. In principle, Judge María Marta Novatti, internally; later, Daniel Petrone, until he became a magistrate of the Oral Court 2 of San Martín. On behalf of the public prosecutor’s office, María Luz Rivas Diez initially intervened, and after her retirement her place was taken by Pablo Turano.
Before the US Justice, Antonini Wilson admitted that the money he had in his suitcase was to finance the presidential campaign of the now vice president. After remaining as a protected witness, he admitted that 4.2 million dollars landed from that flight.
Finally, in 2015, Judge Pablo Yadarola was definitively in charge of the court and the case. The magistrate focused on former national officials for the crime of currency import smuggling, he investigated De Vido, Uberti and Echegaray, Victoria Bereziuk, Ezequiel Espinosa (former Enarsa head) and five customs officers. Yadarola ordered the prosecution of all without preventive detention and dictated the lack of merit of Olazagasti.
The Court of Appeals ratified the actions of the judge and will surely reverse the prosecutions of two of the customs officials. Uberti sought to close the case after filing a prescription appeal, but the majority rejected the appeal. Years later, Echegaray sought to do the same, also without favorable results.
On April 7, 2021, the judge ordered the end of the investigation and sent the file to a draw, which was left in the hands of the Oral Criminal and Economic Court Number 1 in charge of the magistrates Diego García Berro, Luis Losada and Ignacio Fornari. Finally, in October last year, the judges set the start of the debate for March 8.
It is expected that the trial will take place semi-virtually and that some 120 witnesses will testify. In principle, the hearings will be weekly.
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