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 accused them two facts of washing in the country. The first was a kind of service, a presentation: being the link between the lawyer and businessman Mateo Corvo Dolcet and the Colombian Jose Bayron Piedrahita Ceballoswealthy 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 her money, presumably masked in ventures around Pilar. Mauricio Serna Valencia, “El Chicho”, hero of Boca and a local soccer figure, was also accused of being an articulator of Piedrahita’s money. Over time, the Colombian drug lord, imprisoned in the United States, He became 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 it changed jurisdiction and came to the Federal Oral Court No. 2 Comodoro Py -the same one that sentenced Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison-, after 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.
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The news did not sit well with the prosecutors at all. The same source assures that the Court “reopened topics discussed and resolved in a timely mannerin clear violation of the principle of preclusion of instance, 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 based on 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. He indicated that agents who did not belong to the Federal Intelligence Agency would have intervened in the previous investigations supposedly carried out, that the conclusions reached in the preliminary reports lacked probative support and that, ultimately, that document served to arbitrarily choose the jurisdiction of the federal Justice of San Martín”, a historical complaint in The file.
They were too against the abbreviated trial agreement between Piedrahita and prosecutorsfor 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 be declared “of the ‘intermediate’ procedure for discussion of the claims for elevation to trial, 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 concealment and deprivation of information and relevant 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 source of the case explains: “Technically, the judge of Comodoro Py who is drawn the defenses of the request for elevation to trial must be heard, then close and re-elevate to trial.” The impasse can be extremely long.
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