The former president and main leader of the center-right opposition in Argentina will face the process in freedom.
The former Argentine president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) was accused of having ordered the illegal espionage, when he was head of state, of relatives of the 44 sailors who died in the sinking of the military submarine ARA San Juan in 2017, the judge in charge of the investigation decided this Wednesday .
Macri was prosecuted for carrying out “prohibited intelligence actions as an author, by virtue of having made possible the production of illegal intelligence tasks, having generated the conditions so that data on people could be carried out, stored and used,” according to the 174-page ruling by federal judge Martín Bava.
The former president and main leader of the center-right opposition in Argentina will face the process in freedom.
Former Argentine President Mauricio Macri pleads not guilty to espionage accusations during his government
The magistrate prohibited Macri from leaving the country, who has been visiting Chile since Tuesday. In addition, the judge seized him for 100 million pesos (about 943,000 dollars at the exchange of the day), according to the resolution.
The former Argentine president can appeal the decision of the judge of Dolores (200 km to the south) before the Federal Chamber of Mar del Plata.
Upon being summoned to an investigatory statement, on November 3, Macri had defended his innocence in a brief presented to the judge, whom he tried to challenge on two occasions before being rejected in two instances.
“I did not spy on anyone, I never sent my government to spy on anyone. I never saw any report from any family member of the ARA San Juan or any other vessel, “said the former president in the brief presented to the court.
He is the twelfth indicted in the case
The complaint maintains that the relatives of the soldiers who died in the sinking of the ARA San Juan were subject to wiretapping and other interceptions by the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) during the year in which they sought to know the fate of the vessel and of the sailors.
“The tenor of the information gathered, the express intention and the systematic nature of the documents analyzed in this case allow us to affirm that this production of illegal intelligence had an addressee: Mauricio Macri,” the judge warned.
Former President Mauricio Macri before the Argentine justice for alleged espionage
“From the reports in which the defendant (Macri) was told what the claims that the relatives of the 44 crew members were going to make in a meeting, to those in which the demonstrations that the family group carried out in Mar del Plata “, in all the documents” you can see the ideological matrix and the motivational cause that led the AFI to produce that information, “he added.
The ARA San Juan submarine, a 66-meter-long German-made TR-1700, disappeared in November 2017 with 44 people on board, when it was patrolling Argentine waters, returning from the port of Ushuaia (3,200 km south) to that of Mar del Plata (400 km south of Buenos Aires).
The sunken ship was found a year later, at a depth of 900 meters, with the help of navies from other countries.
Macri is the twelfth indicted in the case in which the then heads of the intelligence services Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani are also accused. (I)
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