Claudio Fabian Guevara
Translated by Internationalist 360°
The colonial administration of Mauricio Macri in Argentina has unleashed a new wave of arrests based on another judicial mega-case specially designed for its media impact: the notebooks of the chauffeur Oscar Centeno. The story argues that the driver of a Kirchner second-line official patiently recorded for ten years in 10 notebooks the routes his boss made collecting bribes from large companies and delivering the proceeds in different circuits of political power.
The cause is weak from the start: Centeno has a criminal record, was denounced by his own wife as an extortionist, and his credibility would be poor for any impartial court. On the other hand – and this is more serious – the original notebooks no longer exist: Centeno said they had burned them. Only a few non-perishable photocopies remain, which came into the hands of two journalists from the official newspaper La Nación.
The corresponding judicial procedure would be to seize that evidence, take Centeno’s statement and investigate if the data collected in the notebooks is valid, and then summon him or order detentions.
It is easy to conjecture that these are apocryphal notebooks. The literary quality of the writings of the driver – full of details, comments and anecdotes that feed for days the talk of the Holy Inquisition Mediatic – do not correspond to the poor verbal fluidity of its alleged author. In addition, only a clueless judicial official would not consider that conspiracies abound in today’s society.
However, the judicial procedure is the reverse: it proceeds immediately to order dozens of arrests, both of officials referred to as big business, initiating another indecent chapter of witch hunts. The arrested high-ranking entrepreneurs are released in a few hours, if they “collaborate” and “confess”.
Repent or march, prisoner
“Until now, the criteria used by judge Claudio Bonadio and prosecutor Carlos Stornelli in the file is that whoever confesses, expresses regret and contributes any information they consider relevant, is released. He who does not speak is imprisoned”, summarizes Irina Hauser and Raúl Kollman.
Faced with this organized extortion, which is followed by the flashes of photographers and TV cameras, there is a shower of “repentants who confess”, although without self-incrimination. In a serious judicial investigation it is key that the correspondence of these confessions be determined with evidential data. For example, in Lava Jato’s research in Brazil, which some compare with what is happening in Argentina, Odebrecht’s bribes have account numbers with detailed amounts in Hong Kong, Switzerland and other destinations.
So far, none of that has happened in Argentina. The line that emerges from the “confessions” feeds a story where businessmen go from bribery (and that would incriminate them), to victims who give in to the pressure of the government of the day and contribute millions in funding for campaigns.
Everything is a show where there will be many detainees, some finally dismissed and others convicted based on presumptions, political vendettas or the “intimate convictions” of the judge, and where finally the mafia matrix of the sector will remain intact, because the rules of the game will remain the same, while many right-thinking citizens believe that corruption is finally being fought with a firm hand.
But a frontal fight against corruption contains a simple formula that does not arise here: the cancellation of bank secrecy and tax havens, shelter and structural support of dirty money flows. What we have today is simply circus for the masses.
Repent: the heart of lawfare
For months, in front of accusations about the payment of surcharges in some adjudications of public works, Cristina Fernandez presented a project so that the Parliament can do an audit of all the public work of her government. The project was ignored because the companies of the presidential family are the main contractors of the State in Argentina. A global investigation would put it at the head of the beneficiaries of the system.
Nothing is healthier for the economy of a country than a sanitation of the way in which the State adjudicates public works, a process plagued everywhere by corruption, returns of favors, cartelization and oligopolistic maneuvers. The subject is complex, but possible. However, to do it justice, we must put the magnifying glass on the entire complex web of relations between companies and government areas, and recognize that it is a systemic phenomenon that can not be investigated through “leaks”, cross-references and repentant claims, since this implies giving free rein to the dirty game of the most unscrupulous, creating an industry of repentants and false witnesses that takes us away from the truth, rather than closer to it.
The construct of the repentant always rewards the most wicked, according to judge Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni.
“What you have to do is investigate the complaint, take steps to hijack the evidence before having the evidence tested because a Photocopy is never direct evidence. The figure of the repentant is very disgusting to me. It always rewards the most evil. The repentant is a figure that comes from the inquisitorial era, from the pre-modern era. He is not a repentant, he is a cheek, a delinquent who is involved in a cause and fights to take it as lightly as possible.”
The figure of the repentant is the heart of lawfare. For example, former President Lula, the center of Brazilian political life, is imprisoned for the “confessions” of a repentant, never proven with any other evidence.
Most of these cases of “fighting corruption” – the imprisonment of former Argentine Vice President Amado Boudou, social leader Milagro Sala and many other examples – would not stand the test of an impartial tribunal that analyzed the evidence contemplating the guarantees that of evolution have enshrined as a Rule of Law.
In the future it will be recognized that – with all their personal sins – they were victims of a coordinated political operation to incinerate them in the bonfire of the Holy Media Inquisition, while an accelerated process of recolonization of our countries takes place. There is a need for a massive awakening to stop this backward movement towards prehistory.
Sources:
“Con los cuadernos se está tratando de tapar algo sumamente grave”. Página 12, 5 de agosto de 2018.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/133276-con-los-cuadernos-se-esta-tratando-de-tapar-algo-sumamente-g
“Lluvia de arrepentidos y detenidos en Tribunales”. Página 12, 11 de agosto de 2018.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/134509-lluvia-de-arrepentidos-y-detenidos-en-tribunales
“Operativos de última hora”. Página 12, 11 de agosto de 2018.
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/134510-operativos-de-ultima-hora
