MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chubut court releases Punta Tombo Massacre perpetrator on parole

In the end, La Regina will not go to jail

Chubut agribusinessman Ricardo La Regina was handed down a three-year sentence by a three-judge court in the city of Rawson for the 2021 killing of a colony of Magellanic penguins in the Punta Tombo reservation.

 However, he was granted immediate parole, meaning he will not serve any actual prison time provided he meets the conditions set forth by the tribunal, including bearing the costs of his trial and other environmental restrictions. Wednesday's sentence also mentioned seizing the backhoe he used to commit the so-called Punta Tombo Penguin Massacre.

The case gained worldwide notoriety due to the environmental damage, with many private plaintiffs joining Prosecutor Florencia Gómez's efforts in the case involving the destruction of 2,049 square meters of land with the penguin nests and incubating eggs therein.

As per the court's ruling, La Regina must actively cooperate in the environmental restoration tasks ordered by the court, which include the intervention of the provincial government to restore the affected ecosystem. These actions must be carried out within 60 days, with periodic controls every four months to evaluate progress.

Gómez highlighted the challenge involved in environmental crimes, especially due to the scarcity of physical evidence and the remoteness of the affected areas. She also underlined that La Regina disregarded biodiversity in his quest for profit and was always “aware of the damage he was causing.”

Organizations such as Greenpeace, Fundación Patagonia Natural, and the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers celebrated Wednesday's sentence as a significant step forward in protecting fauna and the environment. According to Greenpeace biologist Matías Arrigazzi, “this judgment sets a precedent and demonstrates that justice can act in defense of the rights of nature.”

Justice Carlos Richeri cast a dissenting vote: he favored La Regina effectively going to jail for bulldozing a colony of 105 penguins and 175 nests in the reserve in the Punta Clara area. A fortnight ago, Richieri and his colleagues Eve Ponce and Laura Martini found the businessman guilty, postponing sentencing until Wednesday.

The court found La Regina “criminally responsible for the crimes of aggravated damage, a fact in the form of a continuous crime” for the events “that occurred between August 10 and 14, September 10 and 14, and November 26 and December 4, 2021” in the estancia La Perla, located in the Florentino Ameghino department of the Province of Chubut. He was also found guilty of the “crime of animal cruelty” for the events that took place between November 26 and December 4, 2021. However, he was acquitted of the charges for the events between September 10 and 14 that year, when he again drove the backhoe over the same path that he had opened exactly one month before.

Between August and December 2021, La Regina opened a road with a backhoe, between his ranch in Punta Clara bordering the protected Punta Tombo penguin colony and the ocean, in addition to dismantling autochthonous flora to set up an electrified wire. In the process, penguin nests, hatchlings, and eggs were crushed. According to expert testimony, between 200 and 300 Magellanic penguins were killed.