Finally Lázaro Báez was sentenced to a sentence of twelve years in prison for having been found criminally responsible for having laundered fifty million dollars from acts of corruption. With him, his children were also sentenced to lesser sentences, and others involved in criminal maneuvers, such as Leonardo Fariña, Fabián Rossi and Federico Elaskar, among others.
With this conviction, the Federal Oral Court No. 4 returned to citizens the feeling that, as is often said before an act of justice, “there are still judges in Berlin.”
According to what is said, King Frederick II of Prussia, during his reign passed through the lands of a peasant in which there was a mill that he used to work. Noticing that it affected the beauty of the landscape, he wanted to buy the land to demolish the mill and satisfy his whim. Faced with the refusal of the peasant, the King ordered the expropriation of their lands. The peasant went to court, which prevented the outrage from being perpetrated, warning the majestic ruler that there were still judges in Berlin.
President Alberto Fernández surely does not carry in his genes the delusions of Kirchner populism, whose obsession against everything that is characterized as “independent” – such as the Judiciary and journalism – is more than accentuated.
But the reality is that he shares the exercise of power with whoever has enthroned him as candidate for president of the Nation, donating him the votes of his most staunch followers, and evidently he is conditioned by the shadow of the one who forces him many times to mimic that populism that harshly questions the freedom of prosecutors and judges to investigate and convict acts of corruption perpetrated during the management carried out between 2003 and 2015.
Thus, Argentine society was able to warn how, in the midst of an exhausting quarantine, the Government waved the flag of a judicial reform, which included proposals such as the modification of the aggravated majority that is needed to appoint the chief prosecutor, and the expansion of the number of members of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, having even proposed their dismissal in the face of decisions that the Highest Court adopted against the tastes and interests of the ruling Kircherism.
It does not take much sagacity to warn that for many members of this government, due to the lack of active legitimacy that judges have as they are not elected by the people, the Judicial Power should be intervened and turned into an appendix of the executive body, as a a sort of “justice service”.
Characters such as Eugenio Zaffaroni have clearly and emphatically expressed this, for whom the magistrates, alleged protagonists of the pompously named “lawfare”, would dedicate their time to persecute “k” officials, and to set up a factory for political prisoners.
That is why when a court appears whose members, unanimously, consider it proven that one of the most emblematic businessmen of Kirchnerism laundered money from corruption due to his links with the government of Néstor and Cristina, the lights of the republican system, whose characteristic It is the independence of the Judicial Power, they seem to begin to illuminate the institutions.
Perhaps this can be understood as the merit of a government that guarantees said independence, but in light of the attacks that in recent times have been warned against Justice, it would rather seem that said independence appears despite the existence of a ruling cast , whose most representative populist expression is nothing less than the Vice President of the Nation.
“There are still judges in Berlin,” a magistrate reminded the almighty Frederick of Prussia in the 18th century. Well, there are still flashes of judges who are encouraged, the Oral Court 4 recently reminded Argentine society, when condemning one of the most conspicuous exponents of the corruption that would have plagued the country during Kirchner’s administration.
Félix V Lonigro is professor of Constitutional Law (UBA)
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source https://pledgetimes.com/sentence-in-the-laundering-case-we-still-have-judges/
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