Tuesday December 27, 2022 | 8:45 a.m.
The story was always fascinating. In 2017, a marathon criminal case began in the Morón courts against Sebastián Marroquín, son of Pablo Escobar and his widow, María Isabel Santos. They were accused of two acts of laundering in the country. The first was a kind of service, an introduction: being the link between the lawyer and businessman Mateo Corvo Dolcet and the Colombian José Bayron Piedrahita Ceballos, a wealthy rancher according to himself, accused of being one of the biggest traffickers in his country. For the local Justice, Piedrahita Ceballos did not come to Argentina to do anything other than launder his money, presumably masked in ventures around Pilar. Mauricio Serna Valencia, “El Chicho”, a hero of Boca and a local soccer figure, was also accused of being an articulator of Piedrahita’s money. Over time, the Colombian capo, imprisoned in the United States, became a repentant of the Argentine Justice.
Thus, the file began its march, in charge of the federal judge of Morón Néstor Barral, the prosecutor Sebastián Basso and the PROCUNAR, in charge of the prosecutor Diego Iglesias. He was finally elevated to trial in August 2019, then changed jurisdiction and arrived at Federal Oral Court No. 2 Comodoro Py -the same one that sentenced Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison-, following a decision by Chamber III of the Federal Chamber in 2020, in a file marked by a strong chess of annulments presented by the defenses.
Today, the trial is suspended. On Monday the 19th of this month, Court No. 2 declared the nullity of a decree by which the defenses were sent after a presentation by José Ubeira, Corvo Dolcet’s lawyer, “because the guarantee of defense in court was affected that protects the defendants”, a proposal to which the lawyers of Escobar’s son and widow adhered. Thus, he sent the file back to the Chamber and a new court must be drawn.
The news did not sit well with the prosecutors at all. The same source assures that the Court “reopened issues that had been discussed and resolved in a timely manner, in clear violation of the principle of estoppel, since it analyzed issues already dealt with by the Court of First Instance, the Federal Chamber of San Martin, and the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation.” .
Among the complaints, they asked for “the annulment of all the proceedings from the record on page 2 (note of the Drug Enforcement Administration -DEA- of the United States of America) because they understand that it was a “legal fiction” through which illegal intelligence tasks were carried out and that, through these, it was intended to provide a substrate of legality. It indicated that agents who did not belong to the Federal Intelligence Agency had intervened in the previous investigations supposedly carried out, that the conclusions reached in the preliminary reports lacked probative support and that, ultimately, this document served to arbitrarily choose the jurisdiction of the federal Justice of San Martín”, a historical complaint in the file.
Also, they went against the abbreviated trial agreement between Piedrahita and the prosecutors, for alleged ideological falsehoods and even asked for the prescription of the case.
Antonio Pedro Ruiz, owner of Café de Los Angelitos, linked in the maneuver with “Chicho” Serna and accused in the case, also presented a claim through his defense. They requested that “at least” the annulment of “the ‘intermediate’ procedure for discussion of the claims to be brought to trial be declared, since without a doubt in the acts of that stage the possibility of an effective defense of Ruiz (like that of other defendants ) has been seriously injured due to the concealment and the deprivation of relevant information and evidence for the opposition to the case being brought to trial, which was finally decided.”
The controversy, specifically, was due to a letter presented by Piedrahita.
That was the argument that won.
“Thus, we consider that the deprivation of the defenses to access the brief presented by Piedrahita Ceballos implied a severe impairment to the exercise of the right of defense in the trial of the accused.”
How does the story continue? A high-ranking source in the case explains: “Technically, the judge from Comodoro Py who is selected by lot has to hear the defenses of the requirement to bring it to trial, then close it and bring it to trial again.” The impasse can be extremely long.
