The Supreme Court rejected a motion from Grupo Macri in the Correo Argentino case.

The Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the request submitted by the lawyers of Correo Argentino, part of Grupo Macri, who sought to remove the judges in charge of the case being handled in the Comodoro Py courts. The case file investigates a possible fraud against the State related to the company's debt payment agreement.

The case, under the jurisdiction of federal judge Ariel Lijo, examines alleged irregularities in the agreement signed by Correo Argentino to settle its obligations with the national government, within the framework of the company's bankruptcy proceedings.

Among the defendants are the former Minister of Communications and Defense, Oscar Aguad, and several executives linked to the Macri family's company. Although former president Mauricio Macri was not charged in the case file, he has always expressed concern about the possibility that the investigation could reach his children, who at the time were members of the company's board of directors.

In this context, both the president of Correo Argentino S.A., Jaime Cibils Robirosa, and the company's legal representative, Jaime Kleidermacher, both also under investigation in the criminal proceedings, appealed to the Court with the aim of removing judges Eduardo Farah and Roberto Boico, members of the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber, on the grounds of an alleged "fear of bias".

The arguments

The officials of Correo Argentino S.A. challenged the impartiality of judge Eduardo Farah. They argued that he was one of the magistrates who reported being pressured during Mauricio Macri's administration, after having ordered the release of businessmen Cristóbal López and Fabián De Sousa.

Regarding judge Roberto Boico, the grounds for the recusal request were based on his previous role as defense attorney for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Oscar Parrilli in the Memorandum with Iran case, in which the former president was indicted and sent to trial for aggravated cover-up of the AMIA bombing.

The attorneys for Jaime Cibils Robirosa and Jaime Kleidermacher argued that both magistrates maintain a "manifest enmity toward Mauricio Macri and therefore toward" them.

In the same vein, Correo Argentino's lawyers described the case, which has been before Ariel Lijo's federal court since 2017, as a case that "has a clear political content, with the intention of bringing Mauricio Macri to his knees".

The rejection of the motion

The request for recusal was rejected by the Federal Chamber, and after the corresponding appeal, the motion was reviewed by judge Javier Carbajo of the highest criminal court, who in an individual ruling upheld the previous decision.

In his ruling, he stated: "The defense has failed to demonstrate that, in the particular circumstances surrounding the incident, the alleged fear of bias is objectively substantiated".

Through a complaint appeal, the lawyers turned to the Supreme Court of Justice. There, judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti rejected the motion, considering that "it is not directed against a final or equivalent judgment".

In the case, the prosecution keeps that the agreement reached in 2016 between the government at the time—headed by Mauricio Macri—and the company to exit bankruptcy proceedings was detrimental to the State.

The agreement, which was never judicially approved, stipulated that Grupo Macri would pay a sum of 300 million pesos (661,387,000 pounds) over a period of 15 years, with an interest rate of 7%. This implied a write-off of 98.87% of the total amount owed.

The case remains in the hands of federal judge Ariel Lijo. The last evidentiary measure was ordered in 2019 by the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber, which ordered an accounting expert report to determine the value of the credit that the State had verified in the company's bankruptcy as of June 2016.

Technical information was also requested regarding the criteria to be used to calculate the interest that this credit would have accrued up to the date of the hearing held on June 28, 2016.

As part of that same decision, judge Lijo requested a comparison between "the value of the State's credit and the value of the proposal made by Correo Argentino SA and accepted by the representatives of the National State," with the aim of establishing whether there was a reduction and, if so, calculating its magnitude.