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The former Minister of Labor of Buenos Aires, Marcelo Villegas
The former Minister of Labor of the province of Buenos Aires, Marcelo Villegas, presented a “spontaneous” brief before Judge Ernesto Kreplak where he describes himself as a “victim” at the meeting held at Banco Provincia on June 15, 2017 where he himself stated his desire to have “a Gestapo” to “end the unions” and in which he instructed the businessmen to mount cases against union leaders. The former official, who is charged in the file, argues that the footage found at the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) that gave rise to the investigation was illegal, that it was all an operation by that agency and that he did not know that in the meeting intelligence agents would be involved. It is a difficult proposition to sustain taking into account several issues: the Buenos Aires government was the one that requested the entity’s hall for the meeting (see separate note); The three AFI men present were the hosts of the meeting and Villegas had a leading role in the conversation; A month earlier, the former minister went to see Mauricio Macri together with the former director of the AFI, Gustavo Arribas.
Among the measures that the court ordered this Monday, one was precisely to ask the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Nation to report if the former Buenos Aires governor María Eugenia Vidal and those who were at the table attended the Olivos estate or the Casa Rosada. Banco Provincia at the investigated meeting. That includes Villegas and other former officials (the former Minister of Infrastructure, Roberto Gigante, and the former Undersecretary of Justice, Adrián Grassi), in addition to the construction businessmen, the Mayor of La Plata, Julio Garro, Senator Juan Pablo Allan and the three former directors of the AFI (the former director of Legal Affairs, Juan Sebastián De Stéfano, the former chief of staff, Darío Biorci, and the former director of Counterintelligence, Diego Dalmau Pereyra). The same thing was requested last week regarding admissions to the AFI building, in addition to the overlapping of calls from all of them. The period that the research takes into account runs from May 1, 2017 to December 31 of that same year.
Villegas’s writing follows the same logic as the arguments that Vidal tried to use publicly: she said that it was a work and institutional meeting, that those who should give explanations are the AFI agents and that the filming is illegal. It is sung that, as defendants, they are going to resort to that argument to try to annul the main evidence of a meeting where even the journalist from The nation Carlos Pagni wrote that what is seen and heard “is, in principle, a crime”: Buenos Aires officials with a group of businessmen and three AFI agents who weave “a judicial persecution without the order of a judge.” He mentions it, among other things, in response to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta who said that he would not remove De Stéfano from his position in the director of Subterráneos de Buenos Aires, because he does not see that he has committed any crime, he is only “in a meeting”.
weak arguments
“I was the victim of a maneuver that involved personnel from the Federal Intelligence Agency. That maneuver would have consisted of summoning me to a meeting which was clandestinely recorded on audio and video, the reasons for which I do not know, years later that recording was found on a disc belonging to a computer team of the AFI. Consequently, it is clear that I was the victim of some type of operation of that organization, which I do not know, but I never knew that they were going to participate in the meeting to which I had been summoned. intelligence agents, who also never showed up or identified themselves,” says the text presented on behalf of Villegas by lawyer Marcelo Rochetti, former chief of staff of former Buenos Aires Security Minister Cristian Ritondo, also mentioned last week in the armed plot of cases by Commissioner Hernán Casassa when declaring in the Intelligence Bicameral about the existence of a judicial table in the province but that it participated d e a national judicial table, which was convened by the AFI. Villegas’s intention, as a defendant, is to turn the equation around and say that a crime was committed against him.
* A key fact that shakes his alleged ignorance of the meeting to which he states that he was summoned and where he did not know who he was with, is that the room on the seventh floor of the Bapro headquarters in Buenos Aires was managed for this particular meeting from a office of former Governor Vidal herself, then Villegas’s political chief. That place was sometimes used by Vidal herself as an alternative office, when she was in the City of Buenos Aires. At the “Gestapo” meeting there were three men from his cabinet. The theory that the construction businessmen, for example, were summoned by the AFI would be somewhat strange.
* Another central question is that Villegas met a little over a month earlier (on May 4, 2017) at the Casa Rosada with Arribas and with Macri, or so it can be deduced from the time of their presence there, which coincides (to 9.50 in the morning), in addition to going to the private office of the former president. It is not at all common for a minister with limited powers, such as the head of Provincial Labor, to meet with the President of the Nation. Nor with the owner of the AFI. Around the same time, Macri launched his public offensive against unions and workers’ rights in general. He spoke, for example, of a supposed mafia of labor lawsuits.
* The video of the meeting shows a very clear dynamic where both the AFI agents, in particular Biorci and De Stéfano, have a central role, as does Villegas. The former act as hosts, even asking everyone to introduce themselves. It seems that most of them know who is talking to them. Villegas is even exchanging comments with them when they advance in the instructions to the businessmen so that they denounce the trade unionists and, in particular, they refer to the leader of the UOCRA Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina.
If there was an illegal filming by the AFI, it will be a separate discussion, although it is possible that the judge at some point will have to respond to claims of this nature, which try to invalidate the entire case. It will be necessary to see if the character of public officials of the people who were there, the preparation of criminal cases that they planned and the correlation with events that were occurring, such as the arrest of Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina under the modality that was outlined there, they are considered autonomous elements capable of proving a crime. To double the bet, Villegas also said he believes his phone is being tapped, asking Kreplak to take action.
Big Tale
The name of the Buenos Aires attorney Julio Conte Grand sounded loud these days because he was mentioned by Commissioner Casassa in the plot of the assembly of cases and because the Bicameral commission had summoned him for this Tuesday. Conte Grand submitted a brief in which he said that he was willing to collaborate, but wanted to testify in writing, but the commission told him no and reconvened him to attend in person on January 27. “The prerogatives that the procedural legislation provides for certain investitures in the face of a jurisdictional requirement are not relevant to the case, by granting them the possibility of giving an account in writing, being exempt from the obligation to appear…”, was the response signed by Leopoldo Moreau –President of the Bicameral–, who also reminds Conte Grand that “if he continues in this position, he would unequivocally damage fundamental institutions of the federal and republican system that the provinces themselves have decided to establish.” In the Commission they remember that reticence can be a new cause for impeachment.