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Samstag, 29. August 2015

The mountain of evidence rumbles, and an avalanche could be coming


Despite every attempt to prevent discovery and guarantee impunity for all their misdeeds and corruption, undeniable reality is collapsing on the Kirchners
photograph published last weekend in Perfil told the story better than anything: It was of a wall of boxes filled with tens of thousands of sheets of paper, records seized in the July 13 raid of the Kirchner family’s business empire. Police seized documents from various locations in the South and in the Federal Capital.  The pile is now being held in a Coast Guard warehouse in Buenos Aires. Given the Kirchner history of mysterious fires destroying documents, the evidence is under 24 hour video surveillance mandated by a court order. The boxes are so large and heavy that many of them are caving in on themselves.
They contain what court sources told La Nacion is a “treasure trove” of evidence showing how “business ties between the presidential family and the Patagonian businessman Lázaro Báez are much broader and deeper than was known before.”  The documents being held include receipts, invoices, contracts and cancelled checks showing millions and millions of pesos changing hands throughout the web of cronies and front men. The K Money Trail that has been reported on extensively here and in the Argentine press. Now hard evidence affirms what we all knew was true all along.
La Nacion, which along with Clarin has been at the forefront of discovering and reporting the hard evidence of the K Money Trail from the beginning, published just a sampling of the extensive and damning evidence that Judge Claudio Bonadio seized in the July 13 raids, until the Kirchners maneuvered to remove him from the investigation.  The newspaper also analyzed the central role played by a “mysterious real estate office” in Rio Gallegos. That office seems to be a front for Máximo Kirchner’s entire business and political operation, and that’s where the most incriminating evidence was seized.
What is increasingly clear is that it is now much more difficult for President Kirchner to obfuscate and to pretend that no evidence exists. So much for her claim that it is all a conspiracy contrived by her opponents.  In fact, in addition to reports in the Argentine media, a new website emerged in recent days calledTangoleaks, in provides scans of unredacted evidence of the K Money Trail – like invoices and checks between the Kirchners, Máximo’s real estate partnerand Báez using Cristóbal López’s bank Finansur. Those documents are all now posted  for the world to see.  Clarin noticed one item on the site and reported on it on August 24, and one piece of paper told a very big story on its own.
No matter what mix of complex tactical maneuvering Cristina and Máximo Kirchner are planning in order to ensure impunity within the Argentine justice system, their tricks don’t work in foreign courts.  Cristina has had no luck in her attempts to evade U.S. courts. In fact, she has amassed quite a pile of rulings and orders against her government.
Some of those rulings relate to her policy mistakes – like deciding to default on external debt and refusing to negotiate with creditors. Those will be part of the legacy she leaves to her successor.  But investigations focused on corruption and criminal activities by her clan will go on.  And as those mountains of evidence make their way into U.S. court proceedings the Kirchner brand of game of sleight of hand will be laid bare.  She will not be able to fire foreign judges and prosecutors in the way she has run roughshod over Argentine investigations. As long as there is unfinished business in foreign courts, those investigations and proceedings will continue.

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