Since he accepted the defense of the ten young men arrested for the murder of Fernando Báez Sosa, Hugo Tomei changed his life. He left his house in Zárate to settle on the coast and dedicate himself fully to the cause. Since he set foot there, his days are always the same: he interviews the parents of the suspects, tours the police stations and juggles to avoid the press. “I’m not part of the show”, repeats in an exclusive dialogue with NEWS. For the lawyer, the media were responsible for establishing that his clients are savages and repeats that at least six of them had nothing to do with the murder.
Like a good criminal He knows how to throw the ball out. It suggests irregularities on the part of the Buenos Aires Police, the forensic team that analyzed the cell phones of the accused and the prosecutor’s office itself. And, while he manages to craft the best possible defense in an adverse scenario, he prepares submissions against judicial officials. After twenty years in criminal justice, He faces the most media case of his career. But not the most complicated. A decade ago, his name -and that of his colleague Horacio Henricot- remained involved in the dismissal of federal judge Federico Faggionato Márquez for suspicious handling of preventive prisons, a complaint that haunts him to this day. Friends in local power, low profile and extremely good manners. Who is the man behind the rugbiers.
Before answering questions, he wants to make a clarification: “Henricot is not my partner. We work together but not in this case. He is eating a garrón because I am inside ”. In Zárate, they are considered one. “Tomei puts the face and Henricot is the thinker,” describes a lawyer who knows them. In addition to having appeared together in the case that dismissed the judge, they defended the mayor Osvaldo Cáffaro in an investigation for embezzlement. Hence the nickname “the lawyers of power”.
But that’s not Tomei’s only fame. NEWS toured Zárate on January 21 and there is no one who does not know him. “He is a prisoner”, “he has contacts everywhere”, “he asks you for the writing as soon as you step foot in his studio”. With regard to rugbiers, rumors also circulate such as very high fees and the condition that if one of the ten resigns from representing him, he leaves the defense of all. The lawyer flatly denies all these versions and agrees to a first interview: “Honestly, I want to talk. What happens is that I need to be confident. I need you to watch your word so you don’t treat the boys as savages.”
Background. “When I saw him on TV defending these kids, I thought: ‘The parents are going to end up just like me, with nothing, in ruins,’ says José Cerezales, a former client.. In 2004, the Justice was investigating him and his brother in the participation of a kidnapping for extortion. According to the man, Tomei and Henricot took advantage of their lack of knowledge in the processes and made them hand over the deed of their field to a third person, Juan Ismael Laguzzi.
In 2006, the brothers changed lawyers and, with their new defense attorney, Enrique Villareal, sued Tomei and Henricot.. Far from being a misunderstanding between lawyers and clients, the story escalated and the complaint ended up being part of the ruling with which Faggionato Márquez was dismissed. Los Cerezales denounced that they had been victims of “a perfectly orchestrated maneuver” by the lawyersby the notary Carlos Enrique Barassi, by Laguzzi and “the participation of the Campana Federal Court and possibly the Zárate Police Station” was not ruled out.
Neither party provides documentation to support their versions. “When we hired them, they asked us for $200,000. We did not have the money, but we had the capital, which was the field, which is worth ten times as much. Then He made us sign the deed. We thought it was to collect that part but they kept the entire field, ”Cerezales tells NOTICIAS. He says they met the buyer, Laguzzi, through lawyers and that he was a man who “sold junk on the road.” In the complaint it was maintained that the lawyers, in collusion with the judge, magically achieved the lack of merit when they signed the papers and that, as soon as they began to suspect, the magistrate again ordered his arrest. That complaint, according to this version, prescribed.
Tomei’s version is radically different: he says that in that complaint he was dismissed and that Laguzzi was a person known to los Cerezales. “They were detained for a year, which was when I defended them. Then a lawyer appeared who knows what he told them. I never had the field”. The Cerezales brothers maintained that they spent a night on Tomei’s sailboat as soon as they were awarded the lack of merit. “I don’t have a sailboat. I don’t know how to navigate, ”she refutes. to each question, the lawyer insists that behind all this there was a political maneuver in pursuit of dismissing Faggionato. “I have to take care that they denounced me. I think they are occupational hazards. Once they got the judge out, nothing moved forward.”.
Can. The story of the Cerezales and Faggionato only fuels the rumors about Tomei’s powerful ties. Before dedicating himself to law privately, from 1996 to 2000 he worked at the Campana Attorney General’s Office: “There is a lot of myth in the town. Everyone knows me, I doubt that someone can tell you a barbaric thing like I’m staying with someone’s house. What an expensive charge, can it be”.
Tomei moves comfortably in the corridors of local power but clarifies, over and over again, that many of his ties have to do with the fact that Zárate is a small place.. That says about the mayor, for example: “I took professional jobs from him like from any other,” he warns.
Rosalía Zárate is the mother of Máximo Thomsen, one of the ten rugby players arrested and, according to the information released by the prosecution, the most complicated. The woman served as Secretary of Public Works in the municipality and more than one in Zárate understood that it was through her and Cáffaro that Tomei came to the defense. he denies it.
“I arrived at the request of the parents. They called me because of the trust they have in me professionally and also personally. I worked with some of the parents of the detainees, I do not give details due to professional secrecy. But my relationship comes from before, they know me “bill.
In addition to having him as a client, Tomei and Cáffaro share social spaces. When it was inaugurated Foundation of the Knowledge Management Center, an institution that finances the funds of an educational center, the mayor was appointed president of the organization and Hugo Tomei, member. For a few years, the lawyer was the president of the Club Independiente de Zárate, another of the spaces where he linked up with leaders in the area.
He doesn’t like comments about power and he doesn’t like when his abilities to get criminals out of jail are highlighted: “I walk quietly down the street. What happens is that the criminal lawyer is always looked at with different eyes. I recognize and accept it because it is part of the work that I like to do and I always try to be respectful.. You handle very sensitive material ”, she recounts.
That “different” look, in general, appears when the lawyer defends the victimizer. To determine the effectiveness of a criminal lawyer, you have to see how much he manages to lower the sentence of a criminal. relatively recently, in June of 2017, Tomei and Henricot achieved a good result for police officer Elio Daniel Pintos. The man came to a trial by juries in the Campana Court for having murdered a 15-year-old thief in a chase. The sentence was two years of suspended execution and, although Pintos was separated from the force, he was not imprisoned..
“Jack-o’-lanterns, how ugly. I don’t feel identified at all. I think I have a lot of passion for what I do, I dedicate myself a lot to the issues because they are issues that involve the freedom of people”, he answers.
media. Now Tomei must put all the skills learned at the service of the ten rugbiers. Although he prefers not to confirm if his strategy will try to support the hypothesis of “homicide in a fight”, He does say that not everyone is so complicated: “There are six kids who have to leave. At least”.
“What I see on television hurts me as a human being. The little I see, because I no longer want to see because it hurts me, because I have a bad time, because I cannot understand that there is a deceased boy and a show is made about the ten detainees and a large part of them have nothing to do with it”, assures. Furthermore, Tomei maintains that there was no intent to murder: “The assault or the fight, whatever you want to call it, lasted 13 seconds, witnesses say. They left. Some put on beach clothes, went to have breakfast and sleep. In addition, there is no video showing Thomsen, for now, or at least I have not seen any if the Prosecutor’s Office has it. I’m not surprised at anything anymore“.
Tomei is not afraid to question the version that places Fernando and his friends as passive victims of the situation and maintains: “There is no possibility that ten kids will hit one. They don’t go around”.
News: What was reconstructed is that, while some hit, others prevented their friends from defending. This was told by Fernando’s friends themselves.
Tomei: But Fernando’s friends were modifying the story. First it was “they screwed it up” and then one said: “They didn’t let me go defend Fernando.” And the one who hit you had no idea what was happening with Fernando. Fernando was taken out by three patovicas, it’s on the video, I saw it, but nobody says that. Thomsen was pulled out by two. Fernando was making gestures at the door saying “why are you taking me out” and there he no longer had his shirt.
News: Are you worried about your defendants?
Tomei: I am concerned because the media sowed hate. It is a violence, after violence, after violence. A show is made about the ten detainees and most of them have nothing to do with it.
News: From what has come out, there seems to be a lot of compelling evidence that incriminates his defendants.
Tomei: If I tell you that in the file there is no one who says that the boys said “kill him, kill him”? A group of people who organize to kill someone, what does the common criteria say? Grab everything and go. Clean everything, bathe, throw away bloody clothes. It was all there. The police woke them up. There are six kids who have to go. At least. Fernando has no fracture. If he doesn’t have a fracture, how was he kicked like a rugby ball?
News: And the shoe brand that Fernando’s body had?
Tomei: Yes, in the neck. The brand is But he does not say that the pressure of that mark was the cause of death.
News: What can you say about the information found on the defendants’ cell phones?
Tomei: How are we talking about what happened on the cell phones if the cell phones were not opened by the prosecutor? The headache that the Federal Police specialists are going to have. Either someone is lying, and I hope they are, or there is going to be a serious problem here. Another one. What kind of process is this? Where is the process? In the file?
News: Do you think they should be released?
Tomei: All people have to be free until a sentence. Defending a person in freedom is not the same as being in jail.
It’s the first time Tomei speaks. The recommendation to their clients is that they do not give interviews: “It is so that they are not treated like savages so that any citizen has the right to exact revenge. Instead of doing the Roman coliseum, now they do it with television and social networks to put together a show where the boys are part of something tremendous”, underlines the lawyer. He never once admits that at least one of his clients has committed a bestial crime. It is logical. It is his profession and he has been practicing it for several years.
by Giselle Leclercq and Marcos Teijeiro
