Former President Macri prosecuted for alleged illegal espionage

A judge prosecuted on Wednesday the former Argentine president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) in a case for alleged illegal espionage of the relatives of the crew of the submarine ARA “San Juan”, sunk in 2017.La decision was adopted by Martín Bava, federal judge of the Buenos Aires town of Dolores, who, in addition to prosecuting the former president without preventive detention, ordered an embargo on Macri’s assets for 100 million pesos (about $943,000) and prohibited him from leaving the country and leaving his home for more than ten days. In a 171-page ruling, the judge decided to prosecute Macri for finding him “prima facie” (in the first instance) “criminally responsible for the crime of carrying out prohibited intelligence actions as the author, by virtue of having made it possible to produce illegal intelligence tasks, generating the conditions so that they could be carried out, stored and used data about people” for the sole fact of their private actions, their opinions and for the lawful activity they carried out. It also prosecuted him “by virtue of having sought to influence the institutional and political situation of the country”, in competition “with the crime of abuse of authority of a public official as the author”. The judge determined that the ban on leaving the country becomes effective once Macri, who traveled to Chile, returns to Argentina.The alleged espionage, carried out between December 2017 and the end of 2018, would have aimed, according to the judicial investigation, to obtain personal data and information from the relatives and relatives of the 44 crew members of the ARA “San Juan”, the Argentine Navy submarine disappeared in November 2017 and was found sunk a year later.” These actions sought to influence the political and institutional situation of the country, specifically with respect to the claims made by them for the sinking of the aforementioned submarine and the consequent death of their relatives, as well as aimed to know their activities, the places where they met, their personal data and those of their environment, “says the indictment released on Wednesday. According to the judge, “all these illegal intelligence tasks did not have any judicial authorization, nor were they justified by service orders based on reasons of internal security or national defense.” For the judge, these actions “were carried out with the sole purpose of influencing public opinion and the normal development of the activities of the political agenda of that year that, according to the pre-established criteria, could affect the management of the then government that the accused headed.” Macri, who has denied the accusations, filed a brief when he went to the court summons to give an investigative statement in this case on November 3.

Original source in Spanish