On Thursday, November 21, in a room at the Broadway Hotel prepared for the occasion, all the shareholders and members of the board of directors of the multimedia La Nación were expected to attend the conciliation hearing ordered by the Justice for the lawsuit of Emerald Miter for the ownership of the shares that belonged to his father, Bartolomé Miter, died in 2020.
However, the place remained empty. Only the actress, together with her legal representatives and her brother, also called Bartholomewa member of the company’s board of directors, attended the meeting. The silence on the part of the current management of the company, according to Esmeralda, “denotes their inability to prove their actions in court” and the lack of interest in solving the complex judicial framework in which they are involved.
But also, with his absence, the members of the business leadership missed one of the most important revelations in this case. Bartolomé Jr. recognized, while almost breaking down in tears, that the signature awarded to his father that appears in the documents that account for the sale of shares to the mysterious Monegasque marquis Federico Spinola It is false.
Bankruptcy
More than twenty chairs were arranged for what could become a tense conciliation hearing. However, most of them were empty due to the absence of the current driver of the company and Esmeralda’s second cousin, Julio Saguierand those who respond to it and are part of the management scheme. But other shareholders without any type of relationship with him and the family dispute that he has been carrying out with the heirs of Bartolomé Miter were also absent, something striking considering that the meeting was mandatory as ordered by Justice.
Thus, it seemed that the hearing would not provide any relevant progress for the case and one could only hope that the mediator would arrange another date. However, during a break, Bartolomé junior broke the silence and with his statement endorsed one of the main accusations that his sister, Esmeralda, maintains: the documents used by Federico Spinola to proclaim themselves a shareholder of the multimedia are vitiated by nullity. As Mitre explained, the signature awarded to his father in which the sale of his La Nación share package is recorded does not belong to Bartolomé Sr. In this way, the transfer of the shares that were within KMB, an offshore company co-owned by Bartolomé Miter and his sister Kinucha, would never have been carried out.
The value of the testimony lies in the fact that the signature under this apocryphal rubric belongs to Bartolomé Jr., who signed as a witness, and now, before the Court, demolishes its veracity. Close to Esmeralda they explain that this signature of her brother would not have been an accomplicebut he acted in good faith.
Furthermore, as he stated, at that time his father was not in New York, where the document was signed, but was in Buenos Aires, which reinforces the fact that it was a falsification maneuver.
This is not a mere conjecture but, according to what is recorded in the National Directorate of Migration, Miter remained in Argentina at the time the document was signed. This signature had already been challenged in court by Esmeralda and an expert opinion determined that the signature awarded to Miter does not correspond to the “morphological heritage of his handwriting.”
The document in question arises from a shareholder book certified by the North American international auditing company Price Waterhouse and, in addition to a signature recognized as apocryphal by the person who certified it, it contains other irregularities: “One strange thing: the book that is signed is not a book where the pages are immobile, sealed with a rubber or glue, as is required in these cases with documents of this type, but it was a kind of folder with mobile pages,” described Esmeralda Miter’s lawyer, Daniel Llermanoswho explained that this type of certification must be carried out in such a way that the sheets cannot be moved, adulterated or changed.
Despite these irregularities, the Justice Department was responsible for turning its back on the claim of the children of the former director of the newspaper who died in 2020 and the complaint was dismissed in various instances, endorsing the transfer. The opinion of the General Inspection of Justice (IGJ) was not even taken into account, which declared the transfer to the Argentine Justice as non-existent because “no balance sheets, no transfers, no tax payments, nothing had ever been presented,” Llermanos highlighted. “The signatures don’t even look alike. They are totally dissimilar. To give a graphic example: Bartolomé Miter’s signature was, from start to finish, a width of seven centimetersthese were one centimeter,” the lawyer expanded on the headings analyzed.
Silences
NEWS tried to contact Bartolomé Miter Jr. to learn more about this revelation, although he did not receive a response. From La Nación they excused themselves from providing statements about the litigation, alleging that it is something that must be resolved in court. “There is a pact of silence,” Llermanos explained about the situation within the company and its shareholders. That same agreement would have led to no one attending the conciliation hearing held on Thursday, November 21.
Now, heBartolomé Jr.’s revelation raises new problems for Spinola, the Saguiers and company. On the one hand, due to the fact that they must provide evidentiary material that demonstrates the sale of the share package beyond the document containing the false signature. Added to this is the possibility that the complaint is also filed in New York, the city where the falsification occurred, and the US Justice Department is in charge of carrying out the investigation.
As a result of multiple judicial delays, the case has now been going on for more than three years. After the death of the family patriarch, in 2020, the inheritance was anticipated to be multimillion-dollar, but the surprise of his children was enormous when they were notified that the shares that Bartolomé had in the newspaper, around 21 percent, were not part of the legacy assets. .
At that moment the previously unknown marquis entered the scene. Federico Spinolawho claimed to be the owner of the shares after, as he said, acquiring the KMB firm, although he did not know or could not explain why despite this statement he had never been present at any of the company’s shareholder meetings.
“The only thing we ask is that they show us the papers of the supposed sale of shares. And the papers don’t appear, don’t you think it’s strange? I asked dad’s lawyer, Mariano Gagliardo, for them, and he replied: ‘I’m going to see if I can get something.’ And I answered: ‘No, it’s not about checking if something appears, I demand it.’ But never, since Dad died, have they been able to show us anything,” Rosario Mitre, Esmeralda’s sister, explained to NOTICIAS about the claim that both of them, along with Bartolomé Junior, have maintained for years and that now seems closer to reaching a resolution. Regarding the reasons why Bartolomé delayed recognizing the apocryphal signature, Esmeralda affirms that the fact of seeing himself disinherited would have led him to analyze the signed documents and what their scope was.
To reach that desired conclusion on the part of the heirs, perhaps the case will end up being processed in the United States, which will help its rapid advancement and clarification. Esmeralda and her legal sponsors are considering filing the complaint in New York. As it is the place where the signature was forged, a New York court could accept jurisdiction and this would take the file away from the Argentine Justice, where, according to Esmeralda, the Saguiers have a lot of interference and power to hinder it.
However, before that, a new conciliation hearing is scheduled to be held after the absences on Thursday, November 21. The new date is set for Monday, December 16. Based on what happens in this meeting and whether or not the defendants attend, the defense of the heirs of Bartolomé Miter will decide the steps to follow. There is also a chance that the current pact of silence will be broken and new evidence or refutations will be provided to support the judicial presentation initiated by Esmeralda more than three years ago. Thus, by 2025, the ownership of the share package that belonged to Bartolomé Miter may be resolved in court to put an end to the internal family, business and judicial saga of this litigation that involves one of the most important media companies. of the country.
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