Federal court acquits judges, public officials who made secret trip to Joe Lewis’ ranch in Patagonia

Following the revelation of the trip in December 2022, the defendants had been accused of accepting potential bribes

Federal judge Sebastián Ramos acquitted judges, Buenos Aires City officials, and businessmen who were being investigated for a trip to billionaire Joe Lewis’ ranch in Lago Escondido, Río Negro. The escapade, which took place in October 2022, was allegedly paid for by the Grupo Clarín media conglomerate. The defendants were accused of breaching the duties of a public official and accepting potential bribes.

Ramos declared the “nullity of all case proceedings,” according to a 73-page resolution the Herald had access to. 

The dismissals benefited everyone who was on the Lago Escondido trip, including former BA Security Minister Marcelo D’ Alessandro, Buenos Aires Attorney General Juan Bautista Mahiques, Grupo Clarín board chairman Jorge Rendo, and federal judges Julián Daniel Ercolini, Juan Bautista Mahiques, and Pablo Yadarola, among others.

The trip made headlines when an alleged Telegram group chat between those who traveled was leaked in December 2022, months after the trip took place. The conversation showed them concocting a plan to hide the trip from the press (newspaper Página/12 had already reported on it). The plan included forging invoices and writing newspaper articles about the person allegedly behind the leak. In the chat, they also discussed planning to say they were victims of illegal espionage and playing dumb.

Media articles at the time posited the question of whether the judges, officials, and businessmen met to plan rulings in favor of former president Mauricio Macri and against former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Ramos’ ruling said that no evidence supported this theory.

Then-President Alberto Fernández gave a press conference after the leak, saying that the revelations were harmful to democracy. “It hurts democracy to see the anti-republican promiscuity with which some businessmen, judges, prosecutors, and civil servants act,” he said back then.

An investigation led by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Computer Crimes and Contraventions led to the arrest of a 22-year-old hacker, Ezequiel Nuñes Pinheiro. He was deemed responsible for hacking D’Alessandro’s phone, then-BA Security Minister. Nuñes Pinheiro was arrested in June 2023. Sources close to his defense told the Herald that Thursday’s ruling could benefit the young hacker’s case.

Ramos also posited that the first leak of the trip came from the Aeroport Security Police — which is being investigated in another case. In his ruling, he quoted the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine, a rule that states that evidence obtained through illegal acts is inadmissible. 

“Filing these proceedings is unavoidable, considering that the evidence the complaint is based on was obtained through the violation of constitutional guarantees; supporting a judicial sentence based on them compromises the good administration of justice,” Ramos’ ruling said.

The judge also said that it was risky to “enable an illegal action” and intrude into people’s private lives “in search” of any evidence of the commission of a crime.

“There are no indications a crime was commissioned nor any evidence to support such a hypothesis; on the contrary, these are actions that should be reserved exclusively for the privacy of individuals,” Ramos wrote in his ruling.

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