The union leader acquitted after the blockade in San Nicolás is preparing a counterattack, and business owners are seeking to overturn the ruling.

The effects of the ruling by a judge from San Nicolás who acquitted a union leader who ended up in the dock over blockades at the company Rey Distribución SRL are multiplying. The lawyers of the truckers' unionist Maximiliano Cabaleyro and of six former employees of the company are preparing a counterattack against the firm's owners, with filings for alleged tax evasion and false accusation. Added to this is a push in the San Pedro City Council against Ariel Rey, one of the company's owners, who sits on the deliberative body. The business owners, for their part, are concerned about Cabaleyro's release and are confident they can reverse the ruling that favored the union leader through an appeal at the Cassation level. As LA NACION reported, several business chambers recently expressed their concern over the precedent set by the judicial decision. The lawyers Mauricio Gugger, representing Cabaleyro, and Gabriel Ruiz, for the six employees dismissed for participating in the blockades, will go after new targets, following the acquittal of their clients. After the ruling by Judge Alejandro López, they will target the owners of the distribution company, Ariel and Gustavo Rey. Both lawyers confirmed to LA NACION that they will file complaints against them for tax evasion. Ruiz represents six former employees of the distribution company who were tried and acquitted of the crime of disturbance of property. They are Maximiliano Pérez, Carlos Ojeda, Lucas Torrez, Matías Torrez, Enzo Ojeda and Edgardo Di Mayo. The lawyer will push forward the complaint for alleged evasion against the business owners. He gave as an example that one of his clients, Di Mayo, was "a truck driver and worked [a schedule of] full time plus overtime, but was registered under a part-time contract modality and in the general laborer category." Alejandro López, the San Nicolás judge who acquitted CabaleyroDiario el NorteAfter the ruling that acquitted Cabaleyro of the charges of threats, extortion, coercion and disturbance of property, the lawyer for the union leader, who led the truckers' section in San Nicolás, San Pedro and Ramallo, will file complaints for false accusation against the business owners and false testimony against some witnesses. "The request to send the case to trial was made based on those testimonies, which could not be sustained," Gugger told LA NACION. One of Ruiz's bets will be to seek the removal of Ariel Rey, currently a councilman in San Pedro. "We are going after Rey for false accusation and false testimony. With those arguments, we will seek his removal," the lawyer told this newspaper. Ariel Rey won the 2025 local legislative elections, at the head of the La Libertad Avanza ballot, and today sits in the "San Pedro Puede" bloc. RetaliationThe counterattack being prepared by the lawyers of Cabaleyro and the former employees of the distribution company is only part of the fallout from the acquittal ruling, which prompted repudiation from business institutions and a request for a jury trial against Judge López filed by provincial deputy Manuel Passaglia, former mayor of San Nicolás. In conversation with LA NACION, Ariel Rey expressed confidence that the ruling can be reversed through an appeal and said he was concerned about the union leader's actions, who had been under house arrest but was released immediately after the judicial decision. "I heard the statements from their lawyers. We have already filed an appeal, we were able to get an appointment at Cassation and we have twenty days. There are arguments to reverse this ruling," Rey said. Ariel Rey, owner of the company Rey Distribución SRL and councilman of San PedroAriel Rey"We are concerned because there is a person who is free and, after the ruling, can blockade again, because the judge considers that [Hugo] Moyano's union can blockade," Rey summarized, explaining that he has not received any notification about the request to remove him as councilman, nor about the complaints being prepared by the lawyers of the defendants in the trial. "The company continues working within the normal parameters of the Commerce Union. We remain concerned about Maximiliano Cabaleyro's freedom, but we are working normally," added the owner of the food and beverage distribution company. Cabaleyro arrived at the trial after a year and a half of house arrest. Between the two detention regimes, he spent four and a half years in prison. The lawyers expect filings arguing that the pretrial detention period was excessive to move forward. "I will prepare a request for a jury trial against the Guarantees Judge No. 3 [María Eugenia Maiztegui] and will support the investigation request being made in the disciplinary control [division] of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court, which asked the prosecutor's office to provide the data on the four-and-a-half-year detention of two people [referring to Cabaleyro and union delegate Fernando Espíndola]," said lawyer Ruiz. Cabaleyro was detained in April 2022, as a result of the investigation into two blockades at the company Rey Distribución SRL. After he was jailed, the truckers' union staged a protest in San Nicolás that cut off access to the city and interrupted the waste collection service for an entire weekend. Fernando Espíndola, the released truckers' union leader, awaits an abbreviated trial"In 2022 we asked the Prosecutor General's Office to review the pretrial detention period and we did so again with each release request. The last time, a habeas corpus was filed, which ended up in the Court; it was rejected, but a disciplinary file was opened," said lawyer Gugger. Business strategyThe business owners' lawyer is Buenos Aires provincial senator Florencia Arietto (La Libertad Avanza). The deadline to file the appeal at Cassation, with which she will seek to reverse the acquittal of Cabaleyro and the rest of the defendants, expires on November 3. Asked by LA NACION, Arietto revealed that from the beginning of the criminal case, the unionists' lawyers "tried to recuse the guarantees judge and the prosecutor, but the requests were rejected time and time again." And she stressed: "The prosecutor's office did everything on time. The delay was due to the appeals filed by the defense. The prosecutor requested the case be sent to trial in due time and form. The Court has no control over prosecutors, only the guarantees court." In the coming days, a ruling is also expected in an abbreviated trial for Espíndola, the other truckers' union leader investigated alongside Cabaleyro for the blockades. If found guilty, the agreement reached for the abbreviated procedure establishes that he cannot be sentenced to more than six years in prison. On Thursday, Espíndola received favorable news: Judge María Elena Baquedano granted him conditional release, after four and a half years in detention, the last stretch under house arrest. By Javier Fuego SimondetAs a political journalist, I have been at LA NACION since 2015, with the Politics section as the core of my work. I have passed through various coverage areas, from street unrest to political infighting. Currently, Buenos Aires politics is my main focus of work at LA NACION.