The oral trial for Mariano Brueraother former officials of the Municipality of La Plata and a businessman, accused of different crimes, will enter its final stage this Tuesday after the defense exhausts its evidence so that the trial prosecutor Victoria Huergo Start with your plea in which, one of the possible scenarios, is that you request a conviction for all those accused. Together with Bruera they are judged Enrique SetteThe architect Gustavo Petro and the businessman Gustavo Roberto Orlandi.
In the first part of the hearing, the defenses will play three wiretaps that were obtained in the course of the investigation that was endorsed in all its instances and that has already been sentenced to Christian Ariel Ybarra (passive bribery and illicit association) and Robert Moreno (illegal exactions, passive bribery and illicit association).
The case began in 2014 after the complaint of William Andreauwho tried to rezone several hectares of land with the aim of dividing them into lots and putting them up for sale for beneficiaries of the successful Procrear national housing plan promoted during the government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
According to the prosecutor’s investigation Jorge PaoliniWhen Andreau started the paperwork, they asked him for a bribe of about 200,000 dollars for the file to be approved.
During the investigation, a computer was hijacked in which an Excel spreadsheet was found on the former official’s computer Raul Moratti where everything is neatly detailed: how many were the amounts of the bribes, the status of the negotiations and how much the vote of each councilor of the deliberative body was worth to approve the rezonings, without distinction of ruling party or opposition. A shocking document with scandalous edges.
Added to this is the wiretapping of Mariano Bruera in which he is heard giving the order to Moreno to “pass the cap” and that he (Bruera) continues “banking everything.”
In addition, the accusation relies on the statements of qualified witnesses such as the judicial instructors (Leticia Bramuglia y Julia Martinez), a surveyor who described the route of the signatures and the computer expert of the Judicial Police. In addition, the complainant himself who confirmed the request for bribes and involved the former Secretary of Public Management in the maneuver Jorge Campanaro and the former mayor Pablo Bruera.
The details are just some of the evidence for the charge to which must be added all the procedural pieces that were incorporated for reading by the judge and the judges who must give the first instance verdict.
During the investigation several municipal offices were raided. In Moreno’s office, 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 Ybarra you hear: “We are going to make a discount”. The businessman is marked by “active bribery”that is, pay a bribe.
Sette was prosecuted for “illicit association and illegal exactions”, while Bruera for “illicit association”. The defenses are at the head of the lawyers Alexander Montone (Bruera), John The Nard (Set), Marcelo Peña and Belén Franchino (Orlandi), Fabian y Facundo Améndola (Peter).
The oral trial is in charge of the Criminal Oral Court II of La Plata, integrated on this occasion by the judge and head of the collegiate body Silvia Hoerr, together with their peers Claudio Bernard y Hernán Decastelli.
