Four harsh sentence requests fell on the three former officials from La Plata and a businessman in the framework of the oral trial for the so-called “Procrear bribes” case. The first three are accused of setting up a criminal enterprise to require succulent illegal payments in dollars in exchange for the advancement of land rezoning to be able to be marketed in the Buenos Aires capital, while the individual was prosecuted for the alleged payment of bribes. “It was almost impossible for these procedures to come out with the payment,” said the prosecutor. Victoria Huergo.
The oral trial for the former municipal officials of La Plata Mariano Bruera, Enrique Sette, Gustavo Petro and the businessman Gustavo Orlandi, entered its final stage. The first three are accused of “illicit association”among other crimes, while the individual must answer for “active bribery”that is to say, pay a bribe.
In this context, this Monday the prosecutor Huergo He requested harsh sentences for the defendants after his detailed multimedia allegation, which included the reproduction of wiretaps. Para Bruera requested his arrest and a sentence of six years in prison. For Enrique Sette he required eight years in prison and his immediate arrest. There is a request for four years in prison for Gustavo Petró and for the businessman Gustavo Orlandi, three years of conditional execution.
As aggravating factors in the sentence, Huergo valued in the case of Bruera, Sette and Petró their status as public officials at the time of the facts and “the millionaire, tremendous sums of money they asked for” as bribes to get the land rezoning files in La Plata approved.
After the prosecution’s argument, based on audio recordings, emails, analysis of telephone communications, testimonies and documentary evidence, it was the defense’s turn. Lawyer Alexander Montonewho assists Mariano Bruera, is the first to present his arguments to request acquittal.
It should be noted that Huergo displayed a giant screen in the hearing room of the Silver Criminal Court where, through a projector, he graphically exposed each of the evidence that points to the accused. also reproduced more than 30 legally obtained wiretaps during the investigation stage.
For the prosecution there was a “structured organization that paid dividends reaching the highest levels” of the municipal administration. For this, they used the Urban Planning Code. “They used a legal tool for illegal purposes,” alleged the judicial official.
He also talked about “multiple windows” who requested these bribes, in addition to the defendants, he mentioned the former officials Jorge Campanaro and a lawyer whom he identified as (Lawrence George) Tomasi who was general director of Administrative Technical Services.
In several passages of the first of the sections of his presentation, he recalled that in this case they had already been sentenced in an abbreviated trial Robert Moreno y Christian Ybarra for “illicit association”, among other crimes. And he remarked the existence of the controversial Excel spreadsheet which he described as “an accounting organization to solicit bribes”.
For Huergo, it was a deal with “million dollar figures that could never be an exclusive business for the lowest segments of the Municipality”. The cases of corruption are “entrenched structures in the public administrations of almost the entire country,” shot the representative of the Public Ministry and recalled that “No one could identify what Mariano Bruera was doing in management” while pointing it out as one of the “highest trusted people of the then mayor Pablo Bruera”.
THE DEFENSE
“It was a very complex task because I had to defend Mariano Bruera from mere forced conjectures devoid of objective elements,” the defense attorney Montone began his presentation, who maintained that in this case there was a “violation of the right to defense in court.”
For that part during the debate “the existence of an illegal association was not proven” and “there is no evidence that points to Mariano Bruera” whom he called “doctor” in various parts of his plea in reference to his profession as a doctor.
He also showed his anger with the prosecutor who tried to add as evidence the sentence handed down by a judge of the Oral Criminal Court I of La Plata that fell on Moreno and Ybarra.
Regarding the wiretaps (which he did not ignore) he pointed out that the expression “to make a play” by Bruera was said in relation to solving a problem to obtain political gain. As for the controversial phrase “pass the cap to some places” he claimed that it was a collection for social tasks for solidarity purposes.
Montone requested the acquittal of his assistant and as a subsidiary proposal in case of conviction that the minimum of the criminal scale of the crime of illicit association be applied, that is, three years and that they be valued as mitigations of the sentence that was always available to the courts. , his capacity as a doctor, that he has minor children and his constituted family.
The next hearing will be this Thursday, April 20, at 9:00 a.m. with the argument of the lawyers Marcelo Pena y Belén Franchinodefenders of the businessman Orlandi.
