The Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation confirmed the sentence to 12 years in prison against a financier and drug transport organizer with operations in the province of Mendoza. In 2015, a requisition by police personnel had stopped a truck in the town of Malargüe with more than 240 kilos of marijuana, packaged in 346 packages inside cardboard boxes in the vehicle.
The wiretapping and intelligence tasks of the security forces went to find Walter Eduardo Bardinella Donosowhose preponderant role within a criminal network made up of more than three people was accredited by the Mendoza Federal Oral Court 2 .
The review of the sentence was in the hands of Chamber IV of the Federal Cassation, made up of judges Gustavo M. Hornos, Javier Carbajo and Marian Hernan Borinsky, who voted by coincidence by discarding one by one the grievances put forward by the technical defense of the convicted person, related to the nullity of certain proceedings and, among others, to the assessment made by the Oral Court of the evidence. Therein lies the foundation for the 12 years in prison, after being found responsible for financing and organizing the transportation of drugsaggravated by the participation of three or more people according to articles 5, subsection c, 7 and 11 subsection c, of law 23,737.
According to the proceedings of the case, on August 31, 2015, a Mercedez Benz truck was seized by members of the Mendoza Police at the El Sosneado Detachment in the town of Malargüe: it had been a little over 244 kilos of compacted marijuana in 346 packages accommodated in cardboard boxes, found in the area of the bunk located inside the transport. Both the driver of the vehicle and the two people who were in a VW Gol behind, who accompanied the journey of the truck, were arrested. The three – later it would be verified – had already been sentenced in other cases. There they began the investigations that found Bardinella Donoso.
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A series of intelligence tasks with analysis of social networks and databases, along with a set of wiretapping -weighted by the Mendoza oral court- found the suspect, who was residing at that time in the Los Maestros neighborhood of the city of Guaymallén. In this context, the evidence that was later exhibited in the oral trial gave an account of the preponderant role of Bardinella in the drug criminal organizationwhile he was the one who had contact with the suppliers and with the recipient of the narcotic materialand who made the decisions and provided the means to execute them.
He was also the one who had the Economic capital to cover the payment of the driver, the truck and the fuel, necessary for the marijuana transportation kidnapped in Malargüe. At the same time, his role as a recruiter of collaborators in the illegal maneuvers was credited, to whom he assigned roles and gave them tasks and instructions to fulfill,
For all this, by confirming the conviction of the previous instance in a ruling to which he had access infobaeChamberlain Carbajo, the first to cast his vote by lot, said: “from reading the grounds provided by the court, and their contrast with the grievances presented by the challenging party, I observe that the latter they have not been able to refute the reasons stated for him to which (previous instance), nor have they put into crisis the foundations of the argumentation deployed, nor the logical course that led it to the conclusion that is now being discussed”. And he added: “from the reasoning set forth in the sentence, a reliable examination of the evidence produced in the debate that supports the condemnatory conclusion questioned by the defense of Bardinella Donoso is noted.”
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Then his colleague Hornos took the floor, who agreed with Carbajo and rejected all the grievances filed in the appeal, regarding which he stated that they only demonstrated “his mere disagreement with what was resolved by to which without being able to notice the arbitrariness invoked or the violation of the alleged constitutional guarantees.”
Lastly, Judge Borinsky intervened, who adhered to the previous votes and added that in the contested decision “the responsibility of Bardinella Donoso was demonstrated (…). In this way, the previous court has appreciated probative elements -mainly Phone conversations captured during the investigation – which, concatenated and weighted together, are sufficient to have the quality of ‘financier and organizer‘ (…) of the defendant in the criminal activity under trial”.
And he concluded: “The criticisms exposed in this regard by his defense in the appeal under study appear as mere dissenting judgments that lack sufficient entity to demonstrate the erroneous interpretation and application of the substantive law invoked”.
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