This Friday will begin the second hearing of the trial to Mariano Bruera along with other former officials of the Municipality of La Plata during the administration of the former mayor Pablo Bruera accused of illicit association, illegal exactions and bribery. During the day, the judicial instructor is expected to testify Julia Martinez, who will provide information that may be key to clarifying the case. It will also expose a computer expert whose testimony promises to be “enlightening,” judicial sources told 0221.com.ar.
Together with Bruera they are judged Enrique Sette (former Secretary of Urban Planning), Gustavo Petro (Private Works) and the employer Gustavo Orlandi. Defendants are assisted by lawyers Alejandro Montone, Juan DiNardo, Fabian Amendola and Marcelo Pena respectively. In this case they were already sentenced in an abbreviated trial Christian Ybarra and Robert Moreno, while the dismissal of the architect was issued Raul Moratti for extinction of the criminal case as a result of his death in 2018.
As reported by this portal, before the start of the debate, the defender Di Nardo raised a preliminary question. He requested that the original audios of three wiretaps of the line of the Planning Secretariat be reproduced in which the voice of his assisted Sette is heard. He also required that an expertise be practiced on those wiretaps. That part assures that it was an illegal listening and that this evidence cannot be taken into account in the debate. The request was accompanied by the rest of the defenders.
The trial prosecutor Victoria Huergo He made all the cassette recordings available to the defense so that they could identify the three recordings in order to reproduce them and he assured that “all” the wiretaps were carried out “legally” because “this is stated in the judicial file.”
The judges unanimously granted the request of the defense but for “the opportune moment of the debate.”
In her accusatory guidelines, the prosecutor assured that with the evidence to be produced in the debate plus the one that is incorporated for the reading of the judges, it will be demonstrated that the three accused former officials confirmed an illegal association and that the businessman paid a $10,000 bribe to advance a municipal file. Also that the sentence of the abbreviated trial in which Ybarra and Moreno were sentenced be incorporated by reading.
For their part, all the defenders said that their assisted persons are unrelated to the facts, that the trial prosecutor will not be able to prove anything, they opposed the incorporation by reading of the abbreviated trial sentence (understanding that it is a foreign process to the debate while they were not notified of its content, among other arguments) and that they will request the acquittal of the defendants.
The judges of the Oral Criminal Court II of La Plata did not allow the incorporation requested by the prosecutor and informed that all the hearings will be recorded and that these films will be available to the parties for possible appeals before the Court of Cassation of the province. from Buenos Aires.
FIRST HEARING
The agronomist william andreau It was the only testimony taken in the long day of debate. His account was clear and concrete, at times with colorful patinas of the composition of La Plata society and its political class that made the public in the audience room tense, among which the political leaders stood out. Luis Lugones (Uncle of Mariano Bruera), Gabriel Bruera (brother of the defendant) and the former councilor Gabriel Cespedes. For his part, the mayor Pablo Bruera He appears in the witness grid and for the moment he cannot attend the public as he did in the first hearing of the trial that was suspended in 2019.
The witness recalled how the complaint began and that he made it on the advice of a friend who will be summoned as a witness, according to the prosecutor. Andreau began his testimony with a brief family review, by way of context, to then go directly to the case. He assured that in 2014 Moratti asked him for 220,000 dollars to achieve the rezoning of six hectares in Los Hornos and some land in the town of City Bell. These lands were listed as an urban reserve but the Andreau family wanted to divide them into lots to sell the plots to beneficiaries of the Procreate Plan.
According to the prosecutor’s investigation Jorge Paolini, Andreau’s land was considered an “urban reserve” and, therefore, subdivision on smaller plots was prevented. However the Urban Planning Code (COU) drafted during the management of former mayor Bruera contemplated that plots of more than one hectare could be divided by decree without going through the Deliberative Council and it was within this framework that the businessman received the proposal to allocate his land in exchange for a large sum of money.
“When I went to denounce the prosecutor Paolini he told me ‘we all know that in La Plata there is a lot of corruption but nobody dares to denounce it’, and immediately he asked me if I accepted that they intervene on my telephone and I accepted. I never thought that I was going to put them in prisoners to all, the only thing I was looking for was that they stop with the requests for bribes”, assured the complainant who answered questions from the parties and judges.
In his account, he also stated that he was the object of requests for bribes several times, that he never paid them but did not report them either, that the first time he reported an act of corruption was in this case, something that caught the attention of the defenders.
After his statement, the witness was made available to the parties to eventually expand his testimony in which he involved the detained ex-Judge of Cassation from Buenos Aires. Martin Ordoquiabout whom the prosecutor requested that a new investigation be opened for the possible commission of a crime.
