President Alberto Fernández gave his first national broadcast this Monday to express his support for Vice President Cristina Kirchner in the “Vialidad” case, which has her on the ropes and a conviction this Tuesday is practically a certainty.
In his short speech, which appeared to be pre-recorded, he assured that he had instructed the Ministry of Justice to initiate criminal proceedings against a group of judges, prosecutors, civil servants, and media entrepreneurs who would have met in Lago Escondido, who, according to an investigation by the Kirchner newspaper Página 12, were conspiring to arrest Cristina.
In a war of press operations, the ultra-Kirchnerist newspapers Página 12, Tiempo Argentino and El Cohete a la Luna, published hacked material from a cell phone line, awarded to the site breached.vc, which shows an alleged exchange of audio messages between the judges Julián Ercolini (Federal Court 10), Pablo Yadarola (Economic Criminal 2), Pablo Cayssials (Administrative Litigation 9), and Carlos Mahiques (Criminal Cassation Chamber II), the Buenos Aires Minister of Security and Justice Marcelo D’Alessandro, who would be the owner of the line, and the attorney of CABA Juan Batista Mahiques.
According to the website patagonianfacts.com, aligned with Kirchnerism, the director of Legal and Institutional Affairs of Grupo Clarín, Pablo Casey, and the CEO of the multimedia company, Jorge Rendo, also appear in the leaks, who, according to the voice messages disseminated, would have organized and covered the cost of the private flight and the subsequent stay in Lago Escondido.
MEETING AT LAGO ESCONDIDO
The judges’ trip would have taken place last Thursday, October 13, on a Flyzar company flight that departed from the San Fernando airport. They all arrived together in a private plane at the Bariloche airport to later move to the immense property of the British Joe Lewis on the outskirts of El Bolsón.
According to the Kirchner media, the same day the protagonists created a Telegram group to agree on a response strategy to the inevitable condemnation of Cristina Kirchner, which supposedly included pressuring some media outlets to remain silent and at the same time planning a unified version to disseminate through certain journalists.
This was the context in which the four judges, plus the prosecutor Mahiques, D’Alessandro and the directors of Clarín, Casey and Rendo, met to develop a unified strategy to prevent the Kirchnerist complaint against the magistrates for the crime of gifts, which Cristina tried to wield to counterattack in the cause.
In the messages that supposedly passed through Telegram, they agreed that they would try to condition the surrogate federal prosecutor of Bariloche, María Cándida Etchepare, to send the case to the federal courts of the Federal Capital, in Comodoro Py, where it would be boxed.
ALBERTO PAYS HOMAGE TO CRISTINA
Among the messages is a name that complicated Alberto Fernández and led to the fact that today he has to go out with something as heavy as a national chain to show loyalty to Cristina. This is Julián Leunda, the current chief adviser to the president.
The 32-year-old, who served as Director of Institutional Affairs for C5N and Ámbito Financiero, appears mentioned in the chats by one of those involved, assuring that he had already spoken with him and that he assured them that he would help them hold the meetings in secret.
Pablo Casey, director of Legal and Institutional Affairs at Grupo Clarín and nephew of Héctor Magnetto, says: “People: Julián Leunda just called me. He looked like he had come with us. Hot with Kollmann for the note.” He said this in reference to the Página 12 journalist who originally published the news about the trip to Bariloche.
With information from La Derecha Diario