The Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation ruled this Friday that the investigation into the alleged money laundering concerning the country house in Pilar valued at 17 million dollars —and other luxury assets linked to possible front men of AFA officials— must leave the Economic Criminal jurisdiction of Buenos Aires City and return to the Federal Court of Campana under the charge of Adrián González Charvay.
The country's highest federal criminal court determined that the investigation should continue in federal criminal and correctional justice, “in safeguarding the constitutional guarantee of the natural judge and a good and prompt administration of justice.” It ordered the transfer of the case file to the Federal Court of Appeals of San Martín so that, “without delays,” it can be sent back to the federal court “for timely and prior intervention.”
The decision was made by judges Mariano Borinsky and Diego Barroetaveña, with a formal dissent from Alejandro Slokar, who considered the appeal “inadmissible” because it did not involve a final ruling. Nevertheless, he agreed on the substance: money laundering is a federal jurisdiction and not that of Economic Criminal law.
The ruling of 83 pages, which was accessed by the site Infobae, comes just after the hearing on Wednesday, where attorney Mariano Morán —defending the accused Luciano Pantano and his mother Ana Conte, owners of the company “Real Central”— requested the return to Campana due to a territorial issue. The prosecution led by Mario Villar opposed this, arguing that the case is broader and has facts originating in Buenos Aires City. Cassation sided with the defense.
Last month, by order of the Economic Criminal Chamber, González Charvay had transferred the case file to the Economic Criminal Court 10 of CABA (substituted by Verónica Straccia), which delegated it to the prosecution of Claudio Navas Rial. Now the case file is making its way back. And it is not a minor detail: the return to Campana is exactly what the defendants requested and, in practice, grants them a clear procedural benefit by returning them to the original judge that the defense itself demanded.
The jurisdiction of the possible crime and the favor to the investigated
In the ruling, the magistrates recalled that the Economic Criminal jurisdiction does not have authority over money laundering, according to precedents from the Supreme Court and Cassation. Borinsky and Barroetaveña emphasized that this jurisdiction has a specialized competence established by law and cannot be extended to unanticipated crimes: there is no rule attributing article 303 of the Penal Code, “which is strictly federal jurisdiction.”
