Casación requested in-person attendance and the elimination of the recess period to expedite the Notebooks Trial
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The Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber decided to intervene to accelerate the development of the oral trial for the Cuadernos de las Coimas case, in which Cristina Kirchner and 86 other people are charged. The former vice president is concerned about the acceleration of her potential second conviction for corruption.
In a resolution signed this Tuesday, judges Daniel Petrone, Gustavo Hornos, Ángela Ledesma, Carlos Mahiques and Mariano Borinsky, gathered in the Superintendency Agreement, summoned Federal Oral Court No. 7 to a meeting next Tuesday, November 18.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The objective is to define measures to make the process more agile and efficient, including increasing the frequency of weekly hearings, holding them in person, and eliminating the summer judicial recess to avoid further delays in the progress of the case file.
Currently, hearings are held only on Thursdays, via the Zoom platform, and usually extend throughout the morning. At this pace, the trial could last for years. For this reason, a majority of judges is pushing to hold three in-person hearings per week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—and eliminate the judicial recess so that the process doesn't stop during the January break.
The magistrates consider this to be the most important corruption case in Argentine history, so its progress must be immediate and uninterrupted.
Possible move to the AMIA courtroom and in-person hearings
The November 18 meeting will also seek to define the possible transfer of in-person hearings to the AMIA courtroom at Comodoro Py, recently remodeled and with a capacity for 200 people.
Se intimó a Cristina Kirchner y al resto de los condenados a pagar $684 mil millones.
Although its inauguration was delayed due to construction, it is expected to be ready by the end of the month, which would allow in-person hearings to resume before the end of the year. This courtroom would be key to ensuring greater transparency and the presence of the public, press, and parties under appropriate conditions.
The judges of TOF 7—Enrique Méndez Signori, Germán Castelli, and Fernando Canero—must coordinate with Cassation on the technical and administrative aspects to implement the changes. It is also planned to expand the staff of auxiliary personnel and court clerks to sustain the new work pace.
Details of the oral trial: virtual hearings
Cfk en conferencia.
The oral trial began on November 6, shortly after 10:20, with 87 defendants and their attorneys connected via Zoom. The broadcast was public through the Supreme Court's YouTube channel.
The hearing started almost an hour late due to delays in the defendants' connections. Four court clerks took turns reading the charges, a task that could extend until the start of the summer judicial recess if the current frequency of one hearing per week is maintained.
So far, more than half of the first section of the indictment, corresponding to case file 9608/2018, has been read, whose referral to trial was signed in 2019 by prosecutor Carlos Stornelli. That document contains about 225,000 words and describes in detail the network of bribes between contractor businessmen and Kirchnerist officials.
With the new proposed scheme, Cassation seeks for the trial to move forward at a faster pace, with in-person hearings, more days per week, and no interruptions during the summer. The message is clear: the country's most emblematic corruption case can't be paralyzed by bureaucratic reasons.
