José López: the secrets of the abandoned prisoner K

Exactly five years ago, the life of the López family changed forever. It is that on a night in June 2016, José Francisco would leave his house in Tigre in the Chevrolet Meriva that he still has, and would go to the convent of General Rodríguez, where he would throw bags over the wall. The fact, immortalized by the security cameras, would become the most iconic image of Kirchner's corruption.

Since that June 14, the civil engineer who had held the position of Secretary of Public Works from the beginning to the end of the K government was detained. And he was seeing how his management colleagues also imprisoned regained their freedom, while his luck was not with him. After the release of dozens of former officials, only a handful of prisoners remained. And López began to understand that he would not have the support of anyone to leave. They had abandoned him: “I am the scapegoat,” he assured his closest associates.

José López is one of the owners of the secrets of the corruption network K. In his 12 years as the right-hand man of the former Minister of Planning, Julio De Vido, he accumulated information on different events in which he himself has pointed out to the current vice president , Cristina Kirchner. He showed some of his letters in 2018, when he declared himself repentant in the cause of the bribery notebooks, but he could tell much more.

It is that beyond the sentence for enrichment, of seven years and six months, he is committed as a participant in an illicit association in the cause for the direction of public works in Santa Cruz, along with Cristina and Lázaro Báez, among other defendants. .

In any case, he looks forward to the Justice finally giving him the go-ahead: on Monday, June 14, it will be five years since his arrest and two-thirds of his sentence. That is why he is anxious: "He has high expectations that this time they will give him the home," one of the last people who spoke with him told NEWS.

Freedom. Two months ago López began to dream of his life outside the margins of the place he occupies, in a location not identified due to his status as a protected witness. His lawyer, Pamela Bisserier, had asked that they grant him the benefit of house arrest in April, based on the fact that the sentence had been reduced by two months for "educational encouragement." But the official defender had no luck.

It is that the Justice gave him the go-ahead, but she demanded a bail of 85 million pesos, which López says he cannot face. Since then, there has been a fight of sentences and appeals that for now has no end. The Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation confirmed that, to get out, he must face the millionaire surety. “The patrimonial situation of the defendant allows to sustain the reasonableness of the amount of him, with express mention of the real estate that would be his property together with the corporate actions in his name,” judges Alejandro Slokar, Carlos Mahiques signed. and Guillermo Yacobucci.

But the lawyer Bisserier appealed the ruling, assuring that this capital, which includes properties in Santa Cruz and Tucumán, in addition to shares of La Araceliti SA (a company created to manage a field in the latter province), was already seized in other cases. . In any case, in the last days she made the same assets available, to find out if Justice agreed to use them to apply the guarantee that they ask for.

Now López is looking forward to a stroke of luck, in his austere place of detention, outside the pavilions that concentrate the other prisoners. Escorted by members of the witness protection program, he receives few visitors and does not carry out many activities. No one from the world of politics calls him, or has a gesture with him. All of them, including former Vice President Amado Boudou, whose conviction was upheld by the Court, have defenders in the media. But not Lopez. The former Secretary of Public Works is the black sheep. A traitor. They even tried to sell him to the macrismo, to him, who had been in the Kirchner administration from the first to the last day.

Prison days. In the courtyard of the Ezeiza penitentiary, several of the K prisoners used to cross paths. In that place, Carlos Zannini went to look for "Lopecito" and accused him, for the first time, of having favored macrismo. In an interview given in 2018, after recovering his freedom, the former Legal and Technical Secretary of Néstor and Cristina recounted the anecdote: “I am not going to defend him. I told him that he could tell who gave him the money, because I am sure that he was not a member of Kirchnerism." And he added: "José López is a human being who is destroyed because he has finished with the image of him before himself."

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Thus, the conspiracy theory that made López a Kirchnerist-Macrista double agent was inaugurated. According to that self-serving account, the 9 million dollars in the convent bags were bribes collected independently by the former official, with no connection to his superiors. And they came from Banco Finansur, then managed by Jorge Sánchez Córdova, who in turn was treasurer of Boca Juniors, when Mauricio Macri was the president of the club. A discursive castling to show that López was more M than K.

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The former Secretary of Public Works no longer expects help. He knows that he became the symbol of corruption. And that, since he chose to testify as repentant in the cause of the notebooks, in August 2018, he became a traitor for the K. Folder in hand, the former official had sat before the prosecutor Carlos Stornelli in Comodoro Py and told him He had given details of how the companies were chosen to carry out works with their respective return. He was pointing up, of course. To De Vido, but also to the Kirchner couple.

Before pointing to the highest of the K power, López told his defender Bisserier that the previous lawyers who defended him had been imposed, among them the so-called "hot lawyer", Fernanda Herrera (see box). López did not name names, but it seems obvious that those lawyers were there so that he would not involve his former superiors, including the current vice president. Coincidence or not: Lázaro Báez, while in prison, had also pointed out that his lawyers were trying to encapsulate the cause of the K money route in his person and not point it higher.

That was a new break in his life. He left the Ezeiza prison to undergo the witness program. He also had to leave the job he was doing in the penitentiary: for two years he made paper bags and received a salary for that from the Federal Penitentiary Service's Technical and Financial Cooperation Entity. It is his last employer registered by AFIP.

Family. With María Amalia Díaz, López has been married for 21 years. They had a daughter, Araceli (in honor of whom they named the company they share and with which they manage the Tucumán countryside), and they improved their lifestyle as the years passed in the heat of power. For them, life also changed on June 14, 2016.

The woman was deleted from social networks hours after her husband starred in the throwing of bags to the convent and she had to suffer the insistence of the media who wanted her word. Finally, she had to leave the apartment they occupied with her daughter in Recoleta so as not to have to face the cameramen who were waiting for her on the sidewalk.

María Amalia was also investigated for illicit enrichment, but she did not share lawyers with her husband, until the arrival of Dr. Bisserier. The official defender brought together the hopes of her family, although she could not prevent the woman from also receiving a sentence for being considered a necessary participant: two years in prison on hold.

“La Mary”, as she is known in Río Gallegos, had alleged that she did not know about the 9 million dollars. “That money was not part of the property of the marital partnership. My surprise at the turn my life has taken since that night has not yet ceased,” the systems analyst, retired as Chief of the Office of the Judiciary of the Province of Santa Cruz, wrote in writing. She didn't believe him.

The lawyer Bisserier had better luck with the nun Celina Aparicio, the other protagonist of the story who, according to the images from the security cameras, helped López to enter the money and was undeterred by the presence of a weapon: she was acquitted .

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Future. In part, López's estate was dismantled by the Justice. The 9 million dollars, 153,000 euros, 59,000 pesos, along with Rolex watches and jewelry, valued at 452,000 pesos, were seized and later sent to the Garrahan Pediatric Hospital and the Gutiérrez Children's Hospital.

His house on the Luján dam was also confiscated, valued at US$480,000, from which he left that day when he began to be left alone. López argued that it was rented, but for Justice he was only trying to forge ownership of the property.

He has a sentence of seven years and six months that she considers wrong. It is that, for what she assures that it was bad expertise of his previous lawyers, they sentenced him separately in a single event, which occurred five years ago. For illicit enrichment they gave him six years. And for illegal possession of a weapon, one year and six months. The Justice decided that the cases be processed in different courts and the penalties be added. López insisted that he could not be that way, but no one helped him claim him. There too, the former official sees glimpses of helplessness K. For him there was no "Lawfare" and his name did not appear in the marches in which they demanded the release of the leaders of the Front for Victory.

If he regains his freedom, as he hopes will happen soon, "Lopecito" can continue to count on the help of the Protected Witnesses Program. Unless he renounces it, he will retain custody, but also, if economic solvency cannot be guaranteed, they should give him assistance as they did with the driver Oscar Centeno or with Boudou's former partner, Alejandro Vandenbroele. In any case, the Federal Oral Court 1 indicated that he should “try to adopt a trade, art, industry or profession” for his subsistence.

The coronavirus no longer poses such an imminent danger, since he received the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine directly at his place of detention. López had asked to be released in 2020, for fear of getting infected, but the Justice denied him that possibility that others obtained.

If released, he could continue his life in Tucumán or Santa Cruz, his two places in the world. Not in the heat of power in the Federal Capital, although many of his former management colleagues have returned. “There is always a figurehead. In all the procedures, ”his lawyer once told him, so that he understands the place that she was going to occupy. His legal adviser knew what he was referring to: she had previously defended María Julia Alsogaray, a former Menem official convicted of corruption. Lopez had it assumed. He transformed into a dark symbol. That is why no one dares to defend him.