By a remarkable coincidence, some information about two judicial investigations was made public in the last three days which at first glance can lead one to suppose that certain judges are or were being spied on with different mechanisms but with some sort of common matrix. One points to the disappearance of their affidavits. the other, to alleged hacks to cell phones of magistrates and creation of trout lines in the name of members of the Supreme Court. The reality is that there are still no conclusive results in those files, but everything is ventilated in a way that aims to feed the theory of the former Buenos Aires Security Minister Marcelo D’Alessandro and the judges accused of the charter to Lago Escondido, that the illegally monitored. It is an angle that, at the same time, helps to blur the alleged crimes that are attributed to them. The shock wave from the cell phone of the former City official, as he is known, reached the president of the Supreme Court, Horacio Rosatti, due to the conversations with his right-hand man, Silvio Robles. It may be coincidence, but one of the alleged victims is the courtier.
Declared jurisdictions
One of the cases in question tries to unravel how it was that 82 affidavits of judges disappeared from the office of the Council of the Magistracy that must guard them where –in addition– 55 envelopes with those documents were found damaged. The episode that led to the detection of this anomaly dates back to June of last year.when an employee found the open door of that unit after the Flag Day holiday, but the results of the audits were now aired in the opinion of the prosecutor Ramiro González which confirms that those are all the missing documents. A report was sent by the Office of Asset Declarations of the Council itself -which, it is worth remembering, is chaired by Rosatti-, and another by the body of auditors.
The Council’s report says that “…many of the envelopes that at first appeared to be missing were found in places other than the Office of Affidavits of Assets. Others were found archived (…) and others worked in the Disciplinary Commission of this body (…) However, some of them could not be located, the reason for their absence having not yet been noticed, or if they were sent to some other dependency…” That document indicated that there are still no identified records that explain what is missing (which includes annexes with public patrimonial data and other reserved ones with information on relatives, accounts, expenses, addresses, investments). LThe auditors maintained that “the locks were not forced; there is no improper or irregular entry of any person into the building during the days investigatedabout which deceptive use of keys is suspected; there was no activity of the computer system necessary to ensure promptness and efficiency in the possible intrusion”. Security cameras were not working.
Obviously, the incident is serious, but it is not yet known if it was the result of negligence and carelessness, or if there was a plan to steal that sensitive information. In the Council they are analyzing what to do and it is possible that the issue will be in plenary this Wednesday to, for example, evaluate non-existent security measures. González slipped into his opinion a theoretical move, saying that it should not be ruled out that the alleged hacking and the multiplication of telephone lines in the name of judges they have used data from the missing documentation. “Note that different situations of interference with the privacy of magistrates and officials whose data could have arisen from the leaking of the information contained in the sworn statements in question have become public,” she wrote.
Hacking, trout lines, espionage?
The prosecutor referred to issues that are analyzed in a case in charge of Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi that concentrates complaints from different judges. One of them is Rosatti, who found that the Personal company was demanding payment for lines that he had never requested. The court entrusted an analysis to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance in Complex Crimes and Organized Crime (DAJuDeCo), which depends on the Court, and a report also delivered last week concluded that there were five lines managed in the names of the Supreme Court, and that They activated from a device from which a line was also activated named after another Supreme Court, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and the federal judge of Posadas, María Verónica Skanata. These last two will be asked to declare in writing, to verify that they are not the numbers they use.
Another of the established issues is that this equipment/cell phone, to which it is not yet known who it belongs to or who uses it, operates from Misiones. This led the investigators to associate this fact with the hacker charged by the Buenos Aires prosecutor Daniela Dupuy in the case where she investigates the hacking of D’Alessadro’s cell phone. The young man, who says that he does not know who hired him or what he was doing specifically, is from El Dorado, Misiones. Some twisted readings also tried to link the fact with the Peronism of that area. If it is to do readings, that province was also key in the espionage of the times in which Mauricio Macri was head of the Buenos Aires government.
The Rosatti lines were created in December (one) and the rest in February through a management by the application of the telephone company with some basic data. Rosenkrantz’s was also generated in February. Each device has a number called IMEI. It is the same linked to the lines of both supreme and a total of 39 subscribers. From the cell phone in the name of Rosatti, 6,590 calls were made, from the Rosenkrantz 839 and the Skanata 6,298 in a period of four months. What is not clear at all is if, for example, these lines were created to commit virtual scams or other crimes or to use other mechanisms to spy on judges/zas. It is key to know who those numbers were communicating with.
Martínez de Giorgi also has complaints from the judges of the Highway trial Andrés Basso and Rodrigo Giménez Uriburu, and those of Casación Mariano Borinsky and Gustavo Hornos, who say their cell phones were hacked last year. The first pointed out that it was during the trial for public works in Santa Cruz and pointed to the D’Alessandro hacker. But nothing is confirmed yet.
