MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Espionage charges against Macri in ARA San Juan case dismissed

Friday's ruling ignored all the evidence, Tagliapietra said

A Buenos Aires Federal Court Friday dismissed all charges against former President Mauricio Macri for allegedly spying on the relatives of the crew members of the ARA San Juan submarine killed when the vessel sank in the South Atlantic.

The court of appeals understood that no crimes were committed and Friday's ruling also benefitted former Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) chiefs Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani, in addition to lower-ranked AFI operatives in Mar del Plata.

“The truth won. The truth can still win in Argentina. Let us not lose faith. There is less and less time left for Argentina to change forever,” Macri said.

The former president had been indicted on Dec. 1 by Dolores Federal Judge Martín Bava who found him “criminally responsible for the crime of carrying out prohibited intelligence actions as the perpetrator by virtue of having made possible the production of illegal intelligence tasks.”

Macri was said to have used information obtained illegally to anticipate the judiciary movements and claims of the relatives of the San Juan crew members and thus minimize its impact on the public perception of the Cambiemos administration.

“It was Mauricio Macri who not only allowed those illegal tasks to be carried out, but used that information to make decisions. In some cases those decisions had to do with containing advance information about the claims he would receive or the demonstrations organized by the victims before the visit of the then President to the city of Mar del Plata,” Judge Bava had argued.

Relatives of the crew members of the ARA San Juan said they would appeal Friday's ruling. Lawyer Luis Tagliapietra, the father of one of the crew members of the ARA San Juan and a plaintiff in the various cases stemming from the wreck, described Friday's decision as “grotesque.”

“It is a resolution based only on what Macri's defense says, ignoring all the evidence. It is a ruling with grotesque characteristics,” Tagliapietra told Télam.