The $LIBRA case. Judges, prosecutors, and ties to power: the path of a case destined for the archive

The ruling by Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi, which dismissed Javier and Karina Milei in the $LIBRA case without leaving any accuser standing who could appeal it, is the end result of a complex judicial engineering operation. On September 4, Chamber I of the Federal Appeals Court, on its first day with the new judges appointed by Milei himself, upheld the decision to remove five investors from the case who had requested to be recognized as complainants for the losses they suffered from purchasing the cryptocurrency whose launch the President had promoted on X. Without complainants, prosecutor Eduardo Taiano remained as the sole accuser — and it emerged on Friday that he had pushed for the dismissal of all the accused in an opinion that was kept under seal. With the prosecutor asking for what the defenses wanted, and with no potential victims who could be heard in the case, no one was left to appeal and request the reopening of the case. At least, not in principle. There is still one path, but it is anything but simple. "The case is already mortally wounded," said an experienced official at Comodoro Py. Federal Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi (raising his hand) at the swearing-in of Pablo Yadarola and Pablo Bertuzzi as federal appeals court judges. Ricardo Pristupluk That ruling by the Federal Appeals Court validating the exclusions of the complainants ordered by Martínez de Giorgi was key to this outcome. It was signed by Mariano Llorens and Pablo Bertuzzi. The Judicial Council competition that allowed Bertuzzi to enter the shortlist of candidates from which Milei chose him was an unorthodox process. After the written exams were corrected and the backgrounds of all the candidates were analyzed, Bertuzzi had ranked 21st. After the personal interview — the most discretionary part of the process — the majority opinion of the committee moved him up to 16th place, still far from the shortlists (he needed to be among the top six). But this year, council judge Diego Barroetaveña re-examined the interviews of all the applicants (they are filmed and uploaded to YouTube) and, after that review, Bertuzzi moved up to sixth place. Exactly what he needed to make it. On September 2, Milei appointed him, and two days later the exclusion of the $LIBRA complainants was upheld. It was one of the dozens of judicial appointments made by Milei, which included the appointment of Martínez de Giorgi's wife, two months earlier, as a federal judge in Hurlingham. At the end of 2023, Llorens and Bertuzzi (then a relocated, not full, appeals judge) had overturned a dismissal of former president Cristina Kirchner in the "K money trail" case. That ruling was only possible because on that occasion both judges made a broad interpretation of who can act as a complainant. Cristina Kirchner had been dismissed at the prosecution's request, and the civil association Bases Republicanas, an NGO close to PRO, came forward: it asked to be accepted as a complainant (that is, as an injured party) and requested that the case be reopened. Llorens said at the time that the arguments put forward by Bases Republicanas were "sufficient to recognize the need to completely dispel the uncertainty surrounding knowing the truth of the events and the accused's involvement in this case." In the $LIBRA case, by contrast, Llorens and Bertuzzi were strict in holding that the injured parties had failed to prove their status as victims of the alleged crime, that they had not demonstrated the existence of a deception that would have led them to invest in the cryptocurrency. They thus validated what Martínez de Giorgi had maintained. They were essentially being asked to prove the very crime the case itself was investigating. Federal Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano. Fiscales.gob.ar That is how the case file was left with Taiano as the sole accuser. Nor did the Administrative Investigations Prosecutor's Office (PIA) — the Public Ministry body that usually participates alongside prosecutors in cases against public officials — take part in this case. Taiano did not bring it in, even though the PIA, before the case went to court, had opened a file on $LIBRA. This Prosecutor's Office, headed by prosecutor Sergio Rodríguez, has pursued cases from which prosecutors had withdrawn. That is how, for example, it managed to get the Skanska case reopened. The PIA insisted for years that a secret, internal company recording about the bribes should be admitted as evidence; the Supreme Court ultimately validated its argument, and that allowed the case to be reopened. More recently — and also with Taiano as the case prosecutor — the PIA single-handedly requested the reopening of the case known as the "VIP Vaccination Room," and the Federal Appeals Court ordered the investigation reopened. But this case is different, sources from the Public Ministry say. They point out that the prosecutor requested the dismissals, the judge granted them, and the PIA, which was not even notified, would no longer have room to intervene against the position taken by the case prosecutor. The only route to a possible reopening of the case would be an intervention by the Federal Cassation Appeals Court, sources at Comodoro Py speculate. The presumed victims excluded from the case filed a cassation appeal against the ruling by Bertuzzi and Llorens. The judges did not grant it (they did not open the path to the higher court), but those seeking to become complainants went directly, "by complaint," to that court. What awaits them now is a process that, at best, is long. And it could be very short if their complaint is simply rejected. At the Cassation Court there is agreement that they cannot be reinstated as complainants before next Thursday, when the deadline to appeal the dismissals would expire. There is not enough time. If the Cassation Court opens the complaint, the appeals judges would have to notify the parties, convene a hearing, and only then decide. The panel that has this matter pending is made up of Alejandro Slokar, Ángela Ledesma, and Guillermo Yacobucci. Judicial sources told LA NACION that so far the appeals judges have not reached a consensus decision. The presumed victims could nonetheless, before Thursday, file an appeal against Martínez de Giorgi's dismissals, trusting that the Cassation Court will later reinstate them as parties. An extreme move in a case in which they are not currently involved, against a ruling no one notified them of, and in an attempt to be enabled to push a case from scratch, against the prosecution, with a judge who has already decided there was nothing to investigate. By Paz Rodríguez Niell Type of work: Original news article