The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation today revoked a ruling by the Chamber of Cassation, the highest criminal court, which had declared corruption offenses imprescriptible.
It was in response to an appeal for the cause of the gold mafiaa case that began in 1995. The convictions were 22 years later, on August 14, 2017, and were confirmed by the Cassation three years ago.
The court ruling was signed by the ministers Horacio Rosatti, Juan Carlos Maqueda y Ricardo Lorenzetti. In their resolution, of only two paragraphs, they left “the appealed sentence without effect” and returned the file to the Cassation so that “a new pronouncement is issued.” As for the grounds, the Court referred “as pertinent” -without giving further details- to an opinion of the prosecutor, Eduardo Casala year and a half ago.
The ruling revoked, of the chamberlains of Cassation John Charles Gemignani y Gustavo Hornhad rejected a proposal of the defenses that requested that the case be declared prescribed.
The attorney argued that the arguments of Gemignani and Hornos to support the imprescriptibility were not “substantially convergent, but completely different from each other”; For this reason, according to him, a duly founded majority was not built in the sentence.
“Even when the coincident conclusion is the non-extinction of the criminal action, it is essential to determine the reasons why the ‘majority’ of the contested decision arrives at that solution,” Casal said in the opinion to which the Court referred.
In his vote, Gemignani had said that the crimes of the officials cannot be declared prescribed because that would imply “a serious affectation of the constitutional right to security-legality.”
Hornos, on the other hand, agreed that the action was in force, but with the argument that in this specific case the statute of limitations had not elapsed because there had been a procedural act that interrupted that period.
But also, with the intention of forming a majority in terms of fundamentals, Hornos made it clear that he would not have been able to prescribe this case either. He does not believe, like Gemignani, that all the crimes of officials are imprescriptible; For Hornos, those that do not prescribe are “serious intentional crimes against the State that entail enrichment.” Those are the ones who attempt against the democratic system, according to article 36 of the National Constitution.
The Attorney General left his defense in writing against possible criticism of his opinion, which favored the defendants. “I do not overlook that the criterion that I postulate could be considered a formal excess because, ultimately and in the terms outlined, there has been an apparent coincidence of the majority in the conclusion on the imprescriptibility of the action in this process”, said Casal, but affirmed that it was Hornos’ vote that persuaded him to rule as he did. This judge -said the prosecutor- “with the alleged purpose of forming a majority” included “nuances that, due to the above, conspired against the required logical-legal unity of foundations”. Casal complained that Hornos, who believed that the specific case was not time-barred -and so he voted-, had included his opinions on the imprescriptibility with the sole objective of forming the majority.
The Cassation Chamber must now issue a new ruling and the first step will be to determine who are the judges who are going to intervene. The Attorney General ruled that this new sentence must be issued “with the urgency that the case and the public order involved require.” The case is already 26 years old.