Global Courant 2023-04-18 14:01:25
Mariano Bruera is accused of being part of an illegal association that charged for authorizations and votes from councilors in La Plata. There are more officials involved.
In April 2014, an official from the La Plata municipality asked a construction businessman for $200,000 to authorize a real estate project. That was the price for allowing a rezoning and subsequent subdivision of a property on the outskirts of the Buenos Aires capital.
The entrepreneur put the offer on hold and went to court.
He started a case that involved local political power and has scandalous edges. Nine years after that episode, the La Plata trial prosecutor, Victoria Huergo, requested six years in prison for Mariano Bruera – Pablo’s brother, former mayor of the city between 2007 and 2015 – for considering him a member of an illegal association that operated from offices hierarchical of the municipal palace.
The defendant had a minor position in the government structure (Interjurisdictional Relations) but a strong influence in fact. Everyone knew that he was one of the pillars of management. “I’m calling you to do a review to pass the cap,” he tells him, according to a wiretap authorized by the Justice, to another businessman with whom he was “negotiating” a license.
Mariano Bruera, in 2019, during another stage of the trial. Photo Mauricio Nievas
In the Courts of La Plata, the oral and public trial is carried out for this case that put Bruera behind bars on two occasions: in January 2017 he was detained for a week. He was released by a Cassation ruling, which was signed by the room chaired by Martín Ordoqui. This magistrate was dismissed and later arrested (in September 2022) for influence peddling and illicit association.
The brother of the former community chief returned to prison in July 2017 and spent two years in a cell until he was granted extraordinary release with a bail of one million pesos.
At the last stretch of the process he arrived free. In this case, the former Secretary of Public Management, Enrique Sette and the Director of Planning, Gustavo Petro, are also charged as alleged participants in that illegal company. Another member of that government died in 2018. And businessman Gustavo Rolandi is accused of “active bribery”, that is, paying bribes.
Among the evidence included by the prosecution are several hours of listening and documentation seized from the computers of former officials. Regarding the phrase of passing the cap, “actually he was asking for money for a charitable purpose,” tried to justify Alejandro Montone, Mariano Bruera’s defense attorney.
The chambermaid Martín Manuel Ordoqui arrested for influence peddling and illicit association.
As the prosecutor Huergo was able to reconstruct, the organization had priced all the files to facilitate the rezoning of properties that would later be derived from the Procrear plan. They were 4, 5 or 10 hectares of land that required special treatment in the Deliberative Council, so that they could later be marketed as lots for individuals who obtained credits for housing construction.
The “managers” showed the owners of these properties the “cost” for the votes of the councilors. In one of the raids carried out by the Justice, they kidnapped PCs with Excel spreadsheets detailing those amounts.
Huergo confirmed that in July 2014, the businessman Orlandi paid $10,000 for a decree signed by Mayor Pablo Bruera. An employee of Planning was in charge of making the collection. Cash. And in “grass-colored, green” bills, as they defined it in official offices.
The “illicit association”, says the prosecutor, operated at least from the beginning of 2014 until July of that year. It was when Guillermo Andreu, a businessman who had also submitted proposals to rearrange his property, decided to file a complaint with prosecutor Jorge Paolini.
During the raids, they found in the computer of the former official Raúl Moratti a detailed detail of the illegal procedure: how many were the amounts of the bribes, the state of the negotiations and how much the vote of each councilor was worth to approve the rezonings, without distinction of ruling party or opposition .
In the office of another former official, the half-hectare rezoning file that had been initiated by businessman Orlandi, who was being asked for a $10,000 bribe, was seized. In a listen between Moratti and one of the employees (in charge of collection) it is heard: “We are going to make a discount.” The file came out. The businessman is the one accused of “active bribery.”
In this case, two former executives –Roberto Moreno and Christian Ybarra- were sentenced in an abbreviated trial for “illicit association”. They admitted their responsibility in exchange for a light sentence.
The trial – which began in mid-February and included the parade of fifty witnesses – will continue this week with the plea of Marcelo Peña, Orlandi’s defender.
And then it is estimated that the court will require at least three weeks to evaluate the evidence and decide the ruling.
The Silver. correspondent
MG
