The Buenos Aires Federal Chamber summoned a hearing for next June 22 for review the refusal of judge María Eugenia Capuchetti to seize the phone of the deputy of Together for Change Gerardo Milman. The measure had been requested by the prosecution and supported by the vice president’s lawyers to determine if she had information about the attempt to assassinate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. One day after the hearing, it will be nine months since the name of Milman, bishop of Patricia Bullrichon the record.
On May 5, the case for the attempted assassination turned around. It was when he appeared to testify Ivan Bohdziewicz, one of Milman’s advisers. Bohdziewicz and another adviser, Carolina Gómez Mónaco, were accompanying Milman on August 30 of last year at the Casablanca bar, when a witness stated that he heard him say: “When they kill her, I’ll be on my way to the coast”. Two days later, Fernando Sabag Montiel triggered his Bersa centimeters from CFK’s head but the bullet did not go out.
Bohdziewicz confirmed this time that on November 10 of last year they had gone with Gómez Mónaco to the offices that Bullrich has on Avenida de Mayo at 953 to delete the information that was on their phones.. Two weeks earlier, the two women had been summoned to testify before Capuchetti and they had not told the truth. First they said they had not been to Casablanca. They suddenly remembered the visit when they were shown their images that had been captured by cameras in the area. Despite the request of CFK’s lawyers, the two advisers left the Comodoro Py courts with their cell phones.
At the Avenida de Mayo offices, they met Milman and an expert who dedicated himself to emptying the phones for long hours. At one point, the assistant prosecutor asked Bohdziewicz if the expert had manipulated any other device and the woman answered yes, Milman’s. Bohdziewicz also recounted that Gómez Mónaco had discarded a phone and handed over another to justice after several back and forths with Capuchetti, who refused to seize the cell phones.
After Bohdziewicz’s statement, prosecutor Carlos Rívolo asked to seize the phones of Gómez Mónaco and Milman. In the case of the adviser, Capuchetti agreed and the Aviation Security Police (PSA) must analyze the device, although with little expectation that information of interest to the cause will appear after so long.
In Milman’s case, Capuchetti objected. The issue escalated to the Federal Chamber, which, unsuspected of having any sympathy for the vice president, has been telling the judge not to lose sight of the significance of the crime she is investigating – the attempted murder of the country’s main political leader.
Days ago, the prosecutor before the Federal Chamber, José Luis Agüero Iturbe, supported the request to access Milman’s telephone number and said that it was not a whimsical measure. “Here the right to freedom in any of its variants is not at stake. What is proposed by this part is the well-founded and necessary interference in Milman’s reserve sphere with a specific purpose: to obtain the truth within the legal framework that regulates the process. This unwavering scope yields to the public interest that the punitive process entails,” said Agüero Iturbe.
Without giving him too much speed, Room I of the Federal Chamber – made up of Mariano Llorens, Pablo Bertuzzi and Leopoldo Bruglia – ordered that a hearing be held on June 22 to decide what to do with Milman’s phone. One of the stumbling blocks that the judge had invoked is that Milman has privileges for being a deputy, which is why Agüero Iturbe replies that the freedom of the legislator is not at stake, but rather the possibility of accessing the truth.
The mentions of Milman in the case are multiple. Not only does it appear with the so-called “Casablanca” track, but a possible link with the Nueva Centro Derecha (NCD) group also arose. The name of its leader, Hernán Carrol, appeared in the file because Sabag Montiel asked that he take care of his defense. Later it was learned that Carrol had had contact with Sabag Montiel and Brenda Uliarte after they appeared on a cell phone Chronicle TV distilling hatred towards those who perceive social plans and while they were showing themselves selling flakes of sugar on the street. The vice president’s lawyers maintain that Carrol made trips with the official who served as Milman’s chief of staff in the Ministry of Security during the Cambiemos era, but that link was not investigated either.
There is another element that caused suspicion beyond the file. Milman had filed a series of draft statements in which he alluded to a “false attack” against CFK and even asked for details about the vice president’s custody hours before they tried to kill her. His adviser told the court that she boasted to her employees of being able to “predict the future.”
Challenges
Sabag Montiel, the man who tried to kill CFK, challenged Capuchetti, but was unsuccessful in expelling the judge in the case. the chambermaid Mariano Llorens resolved this Wednesday the detainee’s proposal and rejected it in limine. “His arguments from him have not allowed him to demonstrate that the balance that must exist between the impartiality of the judge alleged by the petitioner and the guarantee of the natural judge has been violated,” Llorens wrote.
CFK’s complaint tried to separate the judge from the case on different occasions, but the Federal Chamber always supported the magistrate despite the fact that the vice president’s lawyers maintain that her only effort has been to obstruct the investigation. The main question is that Capuchetti does not want to advance with the so-called political lineswhether it’s Milman, NCD or Federal Revolution –with possible funding from Caputo Hermanos–.
José Manuel Ubeira and Marcos Aldazabal also challenged Rívolo weeks ago. CFK’s proxies maintain that a request for Bohdziewicz to testify was leaked from the prosecutor’s office and that, after this leak, the witness began to receive insistent calls from Gómez Mónaco, who continues to work for Milman. In one of the messages that Milman’s adviser left her ex-partner, she said: “Please don’t betray me too.”
Rívolo’s recusal will be analyzed on June 6 by the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber. It is not a minor fact that the CFK complaint suspects the prosecutor, since it is he who is currently conducting the investigation after Capuchetti decided to delegate the investigation to him. It was after the vice president’s lawyers questioned her for working for the City Government at the Higher Institute of Public Security.
