Who is Gerardo Pollicita, the veteran Comodoro Py prosecutor who battled corruption and benefited Adorni

The case for alleged illicit enrichment against Manuel Adorni included a collection of improbable episodes, but the experienced prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita argued in his opinion that he failed to dismantle the cryptocurrency story offered by the former official to explain his level of spending. Pollicita is a historic prosecutor at Comodoro Py. He arrived there in 2005, when he already had more than ten years of experience as an investigator. He has spent decades working on corruption cases. He sent former president Carlos Menem to trial over the payment of illegal bonuses, a case in which Menem was sentenced to four years in prison; he brought the Vialidad case against Cristina Kirchner to trial, for which the former president is serving a six-year prison sentence; he pushed forward the trial in the Oil Combustibles case, in which Ricardo Echegaray was convicted, and also brought the Hotesur and Los Sauces case to oral proceedings, whose debate has just gotten underway. For that reason, this Friday's opinion, in which Pollicita acknowledges having been unable to tear down Adorni's "not very plausible" version, marks a strong point of contrast with that record of success. "The Bitcoin operation carried out between 2014 and 2018 could not be disproven by this Prosecutor's Office and explains the core of the asset increase that motivated the request for justification," Pollicita admits in his filing. In another passage, he adds: "The evidence gathered has not allowed ruling out that the principal capital was formed between 2014 and 2018, as alleged, several years before December 14, 2023." "This Public Prosecutor's Office —he insists in another passage— considers that the results yielded by the evidentiary measures carried out during the investigation do not allow contradicting the version provided by the defense regarding ownership of these crypto asset addresses." For a prosecutor of so many battles, these acknowledgments take on a special dimension. The connection with the MahiquesA Boca Juniors fan and owner of an unpretentious style —it is rare to see him wearing a suit and tie, and he rejects the formality of "doctor"—, "Polli," as he is known in the courts, moves comfortably around Comodoro Py. He gets along well with colleagues and judges. The Minister of Justice Juan Bautista MahiquesRicardo PristuplukHis connection with the Mahiques family is particularly well known. He worked side by side with Ignacio Mahiques on Hotesur-Los Sauces, a case in which they investigated a complex alleged money laundering scheme through hotels and real estate businesses. Between them, they managed to bring before Oral Tribunal 5 the former president Cristina Kirchner, her son Máximo, and the businessmen Lázaro Báez, Cristóbal López, and Fabián de Sousa, among others. Ignacio is the brother of Minister Juan Bautista Mahiques, who since joining the Justice Ministry has been pushing to clear the judicial path for the Government. He does so with his sights set on the Attorney General's Office, vacant since the departure of Alejandra Gils Carbó in 2017 and since then, on an interim basis, under Eduardo Casal. With that old connection hovering over the development of the investigation, the prosecutor would tell his team that anyone who thought he might question the direction of his career because of his friendship with the Mahiques was mistaken. "The documents rule," he has repeated for years in his office. Meanwhile, the case kept accumulating evidence against the official. Trips abroad, purchases with other people's credit cards, cash payments, and stays at exclusive places. Dozens of witnesses also paraded through Pollicita's office, some of whom implicated the then-official: the notary who closed Adorni's real estate transactions; the policewomen and retirees who, in one way or another, financed him to carry them out; personnel who served under his command; and Matías Tabar, the contractor who did the work on his house in Indio Cuá, whose testimony represented a turning point in the investigation. Before the prosecutor, the man stated that Adorni had paid him 245 thousand dollars to carry out a deep renovation of his house in Indio Cuá. The contractor Tabar(Source: Nicolás Suárez - LN Archive)The testimony consolidated the direction of the investigation, but a month later Adorni put forward the cryptocurrency version that Pollicita, he says in his filing, could not call into question. In his opinion this Friday, in which he asked that the Adorni case be transferred to the Economic Criminal jurisdiction for possible tax evasion, he also requested the removal of the testimonies of Tabar and two other witnesses so that they can be investigated for "having carried out operations outside of tax controls." While easing Adorni's situation by asking that his case be investigated for possible tax evasion, the prosecutor pushed for new inquiries into the witnesses who bolstered his illicit enrichment investigation. With Pollicita's opinion, the case seems to be heading toward a jurisdiction that will offer the former official a tax framework. This came after Adorni presented the keys to eight virtual wallets that he claims are his, but no paper that definitively proves the origin of his money. By Federico González del Solar