Investigation of money laundering against Carlos Corach reopened / Argentina News

Carlos Corach, former Minister of the Interior of Carlos Menem, is once again under the magnifying glass of Justice in a case for alleged money laundering.

The federal judge Daniel Rafecas reopened the scandalous cause “Siemens“, which involved the German company and Argentine officials in a network of bribes for a contract for the preparation of DNIs.

The news is that Rafecas received information from the Principality of Liechtenstein that Corach and his family had $ 20 million in accounts in the LGT Bank.

The aforementioned accounts are in the name of three companies based in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. Thus, Rafecas considered that given the existence of new evidence, the case should be unarchived, Infobae pointed out.

Rafecas explained in a letter that the bank movements “also allow us to conclude that the money accreditations reported there constitute the correlate of the bribery payments investigated in the Siemens case, since they would be similar in terms of amounts and period of time in which they would have taken place “.

Eberhard Reichert, a former manager of the German company in Argentina, admitted to the United States court that he had paid a total of 100 million dollars to Argentine officials for the contracts to print the DNI and computerize border posts during Carlos Menem’s government.

After taking his steps, Rafecas sent his case to the residual Siemens case investigated by his colleague Ariel Lijo. The mother case by Siemens has been raised for more than a year to oral proceedings and has as the only defendants former managers of the German company.

Judge Lijo, disagree

It transpired that Lijo studied the new letter from that European country and observed that “the dates and amounts do not coincide” with the alleged payment of 5 million dollars destined for Corach according to the confession of a former German manager.

This bribe would have been paid in 1999 and through the Mirror company based in a Latin American country. Instead, the sources highlighted, the new warrant speaks of a payment of “4,800,000 dollars and through a Vaduz company,” a judicial source told Clarín. Then, it is possible that there are two cases left in which Corach is investigated . One for washing in the hands of Rafecas and another for the bribes of Siemens in the hands of Lijo. Now there will be a long procedural discussion about whether there will be unification or not.

Carlos Corach’s lawyer, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, warned that “Judge Rafecas mixes two money orders. The Liechtenstein account never had money from Siemens and we are going to prove it“, according to Clarín slogan.

For Cúneo Libarona the bribe went “to an account in Uruguay of a company that managed Gonzalo Ordeñana’s accounting firm and that is in the name of the former Siemens manager Ulrich Bock.” The lawyer asked Judge Lijo for a series of test measures to reconstruct the traceability of the money that entered and left the account in that European country.

The former Carlos Menem official was investigated again because in the 1999 tax laundering he introduced US $ 16 million, which could come from Siemens bribery payment, as reported by Procelac.

In 2019, the case was filed with the Justice, despite the fact that the head of the Office of the Administrative Investigations Office (PIA), Sergio Rodríguez, filed a cassation appeal against this situation “Siemens”, who investigated bribes agreed with public officials of Menem.

Carlos Corach. Former Siemens executives confirmed the payment of bribes to Argentine officials.

What happened to Corach’s money

The Corach assets could have been destined for offshore companies and trusts registered in Liechtenstein, British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Uruguay, France and Paraguay, until ending up in tax haven accounts. But in addition, real estate, cars and a private plane in Argentina were the destination of that money.

In 2019 Judge Lijo did not grant the prosecutor’s request to summon public officials accused of passive bribery for investigation, but instead decided to archive the proceedings, essentially on the grounds that “the effective reception had not been sufficiently corroborated “of black money by these.

Faced with the appeal of the PIA, the file for not being able to proceed was confirmed by Chamber II of the Federal Chamber, which is why the PIA presented an appeal to prevent the case from being definitively closed.

Instead, according to Rafecas’ writing, The former minister would have received payments of US $ 4,890,000 until 1999 and another US $ 9,750,000, in installments until 2005.

The bank statement for the account in the name of Endre Consulting (British Virgin Islands) indicates that when the account was opened in September 2000, the transaction was made with an initial deposit of $ 5 million.

“Said amount would be similar to the one that would have been allocated to the former interior minister between 1998, 1999 and the first installments of the year 2000 in respect of pending payments,” Rafecas said. The account in the name of Endre Consulting, a company whose final beneficiary is Corach and his family, managed to manage $ 17.3 million in total.

For its part, the company Cristin Holding (Virgin Islands) opened a bank account on June 16, 2004 with a transfer credit of 3.4 million dollars.

Rafecas spoke of another suspicious transfer, although this time from an account in the name of SSR Real State (Liechtenstein), another family firm. “It is worth highlighting a transfer made on December 4, 2009 for an amount of US $ 79,950, which would have been made from the Banco Surinvest, based in Montevideo, which would be linked to the bribery maneuvers investigated in the Siemens case” .