The former president's defense requested 'the total destruction' of the content that the justice system obtains from the phone
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The cell phone of former Kirchnerist president Alberto Fernández began to be examined in the context of the case for "gender violence" against his ex-partner and former first lady, Fabiola Yañez. The objective is to access the content of the conversations between them. However, the former president's defense requested "the total destruction" of the content obtained from the mobile by the justice system. This request was rejected by the Justice.
Fernández's lawyer, Silvina Carreira, argued that the device was used during his tenure at the head of the national Executive and that, therefore, the right to privacy and confidentiality should be safeguarded. In that sense, she requested that once the forensic copy of the cell phone—and of a tablet also seized—was made, it should be destroyed to avoid any possibility of "leakage" or "access to information not related to the case".
"The data stored on the devices in question are my client's property, both those that may eventually be relevant to the present process and those that are not, so I understand there is no obstacle to providing in accordance with the request," the lawyer stated in her judicial presentation.
Alberto Fernández y Fabiola Yañez.
However, federal prosecutor Ramiro González and federal judge Julián Ercolini dismissed the request. The magistrate explained in his ruling that the elimination of the information would imply the loss of the original evidentiary basis, which nullifies any possibility of verifying the traceability of the digital documents.
The devices were seized on August 9 of last year in the apartment that Fernández owns in the River View complex, in Puerto Madero. Since then, they have remained in custody in a safe at the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
The possibility of accessing the cell phone's content always caused concern in the political sphere, as it is the phone of a former head of state that contains sensitive and potentially compromising information, including details about his relationships with other women during his term.
Alberto Fernández y Fabiola Yañez.
The examination of the former president's iPhone and iPad is being carried out by specialists from the General Directorate of Investigations and Technological Support for Criminal Investigation (DATIP), an area dependent on the National Prosecutor's Office. According to sources in the case, all the content of the devices has already been downloaded, as Fernández provided the access codes. The next step will be to filter only the material related to the judicial case.
Ercolini ordered that all conversations between Alberto Fernández and Fabiola Yañez held through the applications WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, text messages, iMessage, and FaceTime be extracted and safeguarded separately. The rest of the exchanges with other contacts are excluded from the analysis.
Meanwhile, the former president's defense requested that the records of five phones used by Yañez and three belonging to her mother, Verónica Verdugo Yañez, who testified as a witness in the case, be included in the file. The line numbers were provided to facilitate the examination.
