Global Courant
After a year of hearings, it was expected that the former federal judge of Corrientes Carlos Soto Dávila (74) knew his fate this Friday in the oral debate in which he is tried for systematically collecting gifts, paid by narco banks, for guarantee them impunity. But at the last moment the federal court prolonged the suspense: the sentence will be announced next Monday the 12th at noon.
The debate, which stems from the “Operativo Sapucay” against drug trafficking in Itatí, concluded with the “last words” of the defendants, including Juan Manuel Faraone, former mayor of the town of Empedrado in Corrientes, and the lawyers Gregorio Giménez and Tomás Viglione.
Previously, Soto Dávila himself, his former secretaries Pablo Molina (51) and Federico Grau (59); and the lawyer Duylio Barboza Galeano (50).
In his defense, the former magistrate confirmed his innocence by pointing out that he was “in each and every one of the hearings” of the debate and did not listen to “a single employee of the court who questions” his actions, alluding to the organizing figure of a illicit association allegedly dedicated to committing acts of bribery.
He also questioned one of the drug traffickers -and defendant- who presented himself as repentant, Federico “Morenita” Marín (33), regarding whom he said that “despite the fact that they gave him a silver bridge, he fled.”
He also criticized that in the allegations the prosecutors compared his case with that of the former federal judge of Orán, Raúl Reynoso, and in this sense he clarified that he bought all his assets before being appointed as a magistrate.
“This case was a deliberate intervention” in the jurisdiction of Corrientes by Federal Court 12 of Buenos Aires, at the time in charge of Sergio Torres, who instructed and brought this file to trial, accompanied by “media pressure,” he said.
“What they did with this cause is to ruin my life, they really ruined my life based on nothing, I never thought it would happen to me for practicing the profession,” said Viglione, who worked in Giménez’s studio.
Likewise, Faraone maintained his innocence by indicating that he did not hold a meeting with Soto Dávila to mediate procedural relief in the drug trafficking cases that complicated “Morenita” Marín, who has been a fugitive since last February.
The former federal judge of Orán, Raúl Reynoso. Photo Telam
The penalty request
For their part, prosecutors Diego Iglesias and Martín Uriona, from the Narcocrime Prosecutor’s Office (Procunar) and Corrientes federal prosecutor Carlos Schaefer, asked that Soto Dávila be sentenced to 15 years in prison, his secretaries Pablo Molina and Federico Grau, to 12 and 9 years and six months, respectively.
They also required for the three absolute and special perpetual disqualification and the payment of fines of 75,000, 65,000 and 50,000 pesos, respectively.
And they requested that the lawyers Galeano, Giménez and Viglione be sentenced to 8, 7 and 5 years in prison respectively, while for Faraone they requested 2 years and 5 months in effective prison.
In this case, the lawyers Jorge Vallejos and Omar Serial, as well as marijuana smugglers Carlos “Cachito” Bareiro (42), “Morenita” Marín and Pablo Torres, reached agreements on sentences in abbreviated trials.
Carlos “Cachito” Bareiro, convicted of drug trafficking.
The Itatí cause
During the prosecutor’s argument, it was argued that the defendants were part of “an illicit association whose main purpose was to provide judicial cover for the development of the activities of the narco-criminal organization led by Federico Sebastián Marín and Carlos Bareiro.”
So far, in the different stages of the Itatí mega-case, there have been 116 convictions. They were handed down in four different oral trials and many of them were under the abbreviated trial figure. The prosecution estimates that the organization moved at least 18 tons of Paraguayan marijuana.
“That collusion of the then federal judge Soto Dávila and his two secretaries, Grau and Molina, consisted of avoiding advancing in the investigations under his charge related to operations of that criminal organization in such a way as not to legally compromise its leaders (Marín and Bareiro) , as well as improve the procedural situation of those members who were arrested due to the preventive actions of the security agencies, granting liberties contrary to the law,” the prosecutor’s office maintained from minute one.
The prosecutors argued before the Federal Criminal Oral Court of Corrientes, made up of a combination of magistrates from other provinces.
So many judges excused themselves from intervening in a process against Soto Dávila that the court was made up of a countryman from each town: Juan Manuel Iglesias (Chaco), Rubén David Oscar Quiñones (Formosa) and Manuel Alberto Jesús Moreira (Misiones).
To make clear the seriousness of what was discussed in this trial, the prosecutors closed with a reflection: “Drug trafficking cannot be fought if we do not end and fight corruption, even less if that corruption is entrenched in the Judiciary, which must penalize criminal behaviors that put people’s health and safety at risk”.
EMJ
