Carlos “Coco” Mahiques has just added another chapter to a moving biography. Last November he would have celebrated his birthday at the country house of Pablo Toviggino, an AFA leader who had to resolve a file investigating the property and the people listed as its owners. For weeks no one said anything. When the information came to light in a story in the newspaper La Nación, Mahiques remembered that she had too much work and resigned from the room, because she was surrogate. Coincidences.
Mahiques is part of the hard core of what is known as “the judicial family.” He is not just another judge. He is a member of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, the highest criminal court before the Court. During the presidency of Mauricio Macri he was Minister of Justice of María Eugenia Vidal of Buenos Aires. His name also appeared on the trip to Lago Escondido, when judges, public officials, former SIDE agents and businessmen shared a weekend stay at Joe Lewis’ ranch in El Bolsón. That episode still raises eyebrows because of how scandalous it was. It was even immortalized when hacked conversations were leaked from a Telegram group of the protagonists of that trip in which they tried to organize the alibi to justify the trip. The name of the Group was called “Huemules”.
Nicknames. Mahiques divides waters. In Cassation they love it and question it in equal parts. He has a friendly manner, a long memory and a knack for giving his colleagues nicknames. Some are offensive and others are more humorous. Mariano Borinsky is called “Russo” or “Pelado”, because of his Jewish origin and his baldness. Gustavo Hornos, an infamous magistrate, is called “Voldemort”, in reference to the Villain from Harry Potter. To Juan Carlos Gemignani, “Tiro Loco McGraw”, for his unpredictable style. A few years ago, in a moment of anger, he had a judicial official arrested. The case brought him headaches and he never recovered. Crazy Shot was a cartoon from the late ’50s.
The list continues: Alejandro Slokar is called “The Serb”, although his last name refers to another Balkan geography: Croatia. Guillermo Yacobucci is called “Petiso” because of his short height. He baptized Javier Carbajo “the basketball player” or directly “Jordan”, because of his fanaticism for that sport. Nicknames circulate in the hallways and also in the offices. Some say it to your face; others, no. For Daniel Petrone, for example, every time he invokes him he says “Petrovich” or “Petron”, due to a stigmatizing rumor that would be a mufa and thus avoid naming him directly. Finally, he calls Diego Barroetaveña “Paz Martínez”, due to his physical resemblance to the singer, or “Profesor Locovich”, after that animated character from the series Los Autos Locos from the late 60s. Locovich is bald on top, but with hair on the sides of his head. The mischief of giving nicknames seems like a childish attitude for a judge of the Nation.
Clan. The Mahiques family completes the picture. His sons Ignacio and Juan Bautista also orbit the Judiciary and politics. Ignacio was a prosecutor in the City and his name was heard when he competed for a federal court in Mercedes, in a dispute crossed by tensions with Kirchnerism. Juan Bautista is the attorney general of the City of Buenos Aires and member of the Conmebol Ethics Court. He is the eldest son of “Coco” and perhaps the most connected to football and politics. The patriarch’s friends even maintain that he is the one who gets him into trouble because he would have been the one who invited him to Lago Escondido and got him the place to celebrate his birthday.
A relevant fact is that on February 3, President Milei sent the Senate the document to renew for five years the ownership of the Mahiques seat in Federal Cassation. In other words, the Toviggino scandal, a declared enemy of the Government, exposed a vulnerability for Mahiques: ruling in favor of his friend who lent him the country house could irritate the President. Is that why he left? Better not to play with the lion’s whiskers.
