MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kirchnerist businessman Baéz will remain under house arrest; family divided over harsh sentences

Baéz, sentenced to 12 years in prison for the laundering of some US$60 million, is being held under house arrest.

Argentine businessman and associate of former president Néstor Kirchner, Lázaro Báez will not return to jail for the moment. He will continue with an electronic anklet under the modality of house arrest in a house located in a gated community in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

The justice keeps the coordinates of his current address under reserve. The grounds for the sentence will be announced by the Oral Federal Court 4 in mid-April. It will be from that moment on, according to the sources consulted, that the prosecuting parties will request that Báez and the other convicted persons be transferred to a prison to serve their sentences.

Justice can only change the conditions of detention to the detriment of Báez if the prosecutor Abel Córdoba or the prosecuting agencies (Financial Information Unit, AFIP and Anti-Corruption Office) request it.

The businessman, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the laundering of US$ 60 million, is already serving preventive detention under house arrest, a benefit granted to him by the Justice last year.

Martín Báez, the eldest of the sons of the Kirchnerist businessman, received a nine-year prison sentence and is the only one who is in the Ezeiza prison. He does not talk to his younger brothers (Leandro), but he does talk to his father.

The Báez family's internal affairs went through the family, to such an extent that some of the siblings spent years without speaking to each other, and even without seeing their father. According to Buenos Aires media, Leandro Baez had a quarrel with his father, whom he did not visit in prison for two years. They only met again two weeks ago, in the house where Lázaro is arrested. In that meeting, the businessman met his granddaughter. And in a dialogue prior to the sentence, he had told his son Leandro, according to sources of his defense.

The five-year prison sentence fell heavily on Leandro's entourage. Both his lawyer, Roberto Herrera, who also represents Melina (the youngest of the sisters), and Lázaro Báez himself, had hoped that the court would give him a lesser sentence for considering him a secondary participant in the crime of money laundering. However, the TOF 4 sentenced him to five years for understanding that he was a necessary participant.

Melina and Luciana were convicted as secondary participants and received three-year suspended sentences. Leandro and Melina decided to go with lawyers and defense strategies different from those of their father and siblings Martín and Luciana. The lawyer who defended them in this process also represents Norma Calismonte, the mother of the four, in the process for the dispute of the marital assets with Lázaro.