The Federal Court imposed conditional prison sentences after verifying a scheme that falsified documents to illegally access pension benefits.
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After more than 17 years of judicial investigation, the Federal Justice condemned a former employee of ANSES and two agents for being part of a fraudulent retirement scheme that operated in the Rawson delegation, in the province of San Juan.
The sentence was issued this Tuesday by the Federal Oral Court of Rawson, composed of judges Eliana Ratta, Hugo Echegaray, and Daniel Doffo, who approved an agreement between the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the defenses of the accused.
According to reports, the convicted received sentences of two years of conditional prison, so none will have to serve actual jail time. The defendants are María Fernanda Cerdera, former official of the UDAI Rawson, and the agents Rubén Gómez and Carlos Zárate.
Cause of corruption at ANSES in San Juan
In parallel, Andrea del Valle Masquijo was acquitted due to the benefit of the doubt, after the Prosecutor's Office considered that there was not enough evidence to prove her direct involvement in the investigated maneuvers.
The judicial case began on August 31, 2009, following a complaint filed by the Fiscal Unit for Social Security Investigation. The case was under the jurisdiction of prosecutor Francisco Maldonado and then-federal judge Leopoldo Rago Gallo.
The investigation managed to reconstruct a fraudulent system that would have operated between September and October 2008, during the implementation of the pension moratoriums promoted by the government of Néstor Kirchner.
Néstor Kirchner promoted the pension moratoriums.
Those programs allowed workers without the 30 years of contributions to regularize their pension situation through payment plans deducted directly from their future retirement. The measure generated a massive demand for procedures in various offices across the country.
In this context, the UDAI Rawson was created in 2006 to handle the enormous number of requests, which resulted in long lines and significant administrative saturation. According to the judicial investigation, it was there that the illegal maneuver began to operate.
According to the case file, employees and private agents processed retirements using only photocopies of altered identity documents.
The mechanism consisted of modifying the birth dates of individuals to make them appear older than they actually were, thus artificially meeting the requirements needed to access retirement.
The irregularities detected varied in magnitude. In some cases, the dates were altered by up to ten years; in others, five, three, or just a few months, enough to exceed the minimum age required at that time: 65 years for men and 60 for women.
