Scandal in PRO: a candidate convicted of forging signatures

In the midst of the reconfiguration of the Buenos Aires political scene, the old apparatus of PRO is once again at the center of a new judicial scandal. This time, the person involved is Juan Pablo Chiesa, who held the 30th position on the list of candidates for Buenos Aires legislators for this group.

Chiesa was removed from the list after it was revealed that he received a one-year suspended prison sentence handed down by the Federal Criminal Oral Court No. 7, which found him a necessary participant in the crime of repeated ideological falsehood on seven occasions. The maneuver involved the falsification of signatures of affiliates to the party "Aptitud Renovadora", of which Chiesa was president.

"The affiliations were done by a street team and I was unaware that seven signatures had been falsified," Chiesa stated in dialogue with the media, in an attempt to distance himself from the events, despite having accepted his guilt in a summary trial, where he himself acted as his defense attorney.

The sentence also fell on Juan Esteban Echeverría, another leader of the same party, who was identified as the criminally responsible author of falsely certifying the signatures. Unlike Chiesa, who was convicted as a necessary participant, Echeverría was declared the material author of the crime.

The case was led by federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuán, who classified the events as repeated ideological falsehood, a charge that involves the deliberate manipulation of public documents. The affected individuals—seven in total—testified before the prosecution that they did not recognize the attributed signatures, although some did confirm that the attached copies of their IDs were authentic.

Both convicts will also have to establish a residence for two years and submit to judicial control as part of the conditions of their sentence. The signatures, it should be noted, were endorsed by Echeverría and countersigned by Chiesa, thus closing a fraudulent validation circuit.

From PRO, they reported that upon learning of the ruling, Chiesa was asked to resign immediately, although they acknowledged that at the time, he presented a clean criminal record certificate. However, he failed to mention that he had been under investigation since 2023 for this case.