The oral and public trial began for the Cause Notebooksthe corruption trial has 87 people – including former officials, businessmen and drivers – sitting in the dock, accused of their alleged participation in a network of systematic collection of bribes linked to public works during the governments of Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The beginning of the debate was led by the Federal Oral Court No. 7 and the first hearings were held with a mixed modality – in-person and virtual – to allow the connection of several defendants and witnesses.
The investigation originated in 2018 from the driver’s notebooks Oscar Centeno, that recorded—day by day—movements, trips and deliveries of bags of money destined for former officials. These notes, delivered to Justice and disseminated by the press, described an alleged mechanism for collecting illicit funds by officials of the Ministry of Planning, headed by Julio De Vido, and a payment circuit with State contracting companies. Based on this documentation, numerous related investigations were stopped and opened, which ended in prosecutions, repentance, and requests for prosecution.
Among the accused is former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accused of being the head of an illicit association that organized and received those payments; Next to her are former ministers, secretaries, directors of public organizations, senior executives of construction companies and the drivers themselves who recorded the maneuvers. Top-level businessmen declared that they were sorry and acknowledged the delivery of million-dollar sums in exchange for contracts, while the defenses question the documentary evidence and the procedures followed during the investigation.
A central piece of the evidentiary narrative is the figure of Roberto Barattathen undersecretary of Coordination of the Ministry of Federal Planning, in charge of key areas of public works. Baratta appears in the notebooks and was pointed out by several repentants as the official who coordinated collections and distributed the collection; his former driver, Oscar Centenowas the one who wrote the notes that gave the cause its name. The accusation attributes to him, in summary, a role of operational liaison between the ministers and the contracting companies, with supervision of works, contact with businessmen and receipt or demand of funds that, according to prosecutors, were part of the bribery circuit.
Baratta had already been arrested and prosecuted in the first raids and, in related cases, received convictions for irregularities linked to purchases and contracts, such as in the file for maneuvers with the purchase of LNG; His procedural situation is a key piece in the framework that the prosecutor and the complaint intend to demonstrate in the oral trial. For the Prosecutor’s Office, his testimony and eventual conviction would confirm the existence of a permanent collection structure; For the defense, however, his figure has been the subject of disputes about the veracity of the repentants and the evaluation of the documentary evidence.
Nelson Lazarte He is another key character in the plot. As Centeno’s notes reveal, the man who regained his freedom a few years ago was important in the money collection circuit commanded by Baratta, the right hand of former Planning Minister Julio De Vido. These texts recount alleged trips in which Lazarte, a former bricklayer, accompanies the Undersecretary of Coordination and Management Control, to collect bags with dollars from different businessmen.
Centeno, in a note dated August 11, 2010, described: “From the Ministry I took the Attorney to his apartment. Nelson Lazarte also came with us. We went to the Quinta de Olivos, we entered and the Attorney went down with Nelson to meet with Doctor Néstor Kirchner, while I waited in the car with bags. I counted them and there were bundles of 100,000 dollars, and each bag contained: one had “800,000 dollars and in the other there was 700,000 dollars.” This modus operandi is repeated throughout the eight notebooks that the driver wrote
Due to these revelations, on August 1, Lazarte was arrested in the town of San Andrés, in the province of Buenos Aires. Baratta’s former secretary denied all the accusations made against him by prosecutor Carlos Stornelli during the investigation. “I did not see anything of those millionaire amounts that are mentioned, and this is demonstrated by my assets and my living condition. I live three blocks from an emergency slum. At the time of the raid, no works of art, nor dollars, nor high-end cars were kidnapped from me. This demonstrates my living condition, which is humble,” he defended himself before Bonadio, in the first hearings of those years.
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