Zanchetta, accused of spying on judges, insists on being released and had to go out to look for magistrates: several were his victims

Ariel Zanchetta, the former police officer who is accused of having been an inorganic intelligence agent who spied on judges of Comodoro Py and the Supreme Court, seeks to get out of prison. He has been staying there for five months. “Death to the spy in Pavilion 9”, they warned him a month ago in jail. The former police officer who proclaims himself a journalist demanded his release, but Judge Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi rejected it because ongoing measures are still being carried out. But the former uniformed man appealed. The curious thing is that, in the middle of the judicial fair, he does not find magistrates to resolve: three chambermaids had to excuse themselves because they were victims of these maneuversthey revealed to Infobae judicial sources.

In the last hours before the summer judicial fair, the defense arrived at the Federal Chamber with a request for Zanchetta’s freedom. His memorial with the arguments to support the claim was formally presented on Tuesday, January 2. Usually, the file is reviewed on the second floor of the Retiro courts by the members of Chamber II of the Federal Chamber: Martín Irurzun, Eduardo Farah and Roberto Boico. But during January only Boico stayed working and his colleagues went on leave.

In the first fortnight of the year, two members of Room I also stayed working, Pablo Bertuzzi and Leopoldo Bruglia. However, both appear in the lists that Zanchetta himself searched in the database. SudamericaData, the clue that led the former police officer to be imprisoned in this case. The same day he looked for the chambermaid’s information Mariano Borinsky, the current president of Cassation had had his phone hacked. Faced with this scenario, Bruglia and Bertuzzi decided to excuse themselves from intervening in the case.

But there were no more active members to intervene in the Federal Chamber, and, therefore, they went to look for the Economic Criminal Chamber. There, the judges’ chairs are also deserted due to the large number of vacancies. During the fair he was alone Roberto Hornos (and Bruglia subrogated the cases to be resolved in that court). But as soon as he was notified that he had to intervene in this file, Hornos also excused himself: his brother, the Cassation judge Gustavo Hornoswas also one of the hacked judges, who are victims in this file.

It has never happened before that there were no judges from the Federal Chamber or the Economic Criminal Chamber available to resolve, they told Infobae judicial sources. In this context, the court decided to notify the Chamber of Cassation. On Friday, Borinsky – in his capacity as president – resolved to integrate, as proposed by the subrogation law, with oral court judges. By draw, the luck fell to the judge Sabrina Namer, of the Federal Oral Court 8; and the judge Luis Losadajudge of the Oral Economic Criminal Court No. 2.

While waiting for the acceptance of his request for release, Zanchetta received another refusal: that of Judge Martínez De Giorgi to grant him house arrest. On December 27, his defense requested that he be granted a reduction in preventive detention because he suffers from type 2 diabetes and the situation of confinement had caused a deterioration in his health.

Zanchetta explained that he lost 8 kilos, that his arms and legs are falling asleep, that “boils appeared on his body and head” and that he suffers from headaches, lower back pain, and pain when urinating. And his defense assured that the medical care he received in the prison was deficient and showed “a high degree of neglect.” He stressed that his client’s personal doctor recommended a pancreas study, but that the SPF only had an appointment for February. And he added that his age, 57 years, plus a previous stroke, in a context of detention “would have led to the alteration of his nervous situation, which would aggravate his general medical condition.”

The prosecutor Carlos Stornelli, that came to the file recently after the excuse of continuing to intervene from his colleague Gerardo Pollicita, rejected the proposal: he said that the alleged lack of treatment and adequate medical supervision by the SPF “does not present a correlation in the actions incorporated into the file – more precisely in the Health File formed with respect to the accused -” and, therefore, it does not It was appropriate to accommodate the requested mitigation, beyond continuing to monitor Zanchetta’s health status – within the framework of the respective health file – as well as urging the SPF authorities to take all the corresponding measures. for the purposes of the detainee receiving proper treatment and control of the clinical conditions suffered.

The judge requested reports from the Medical Director of the Medical Assistance Unit of the Marcos Paz Federal Penitentiary Complex incorporated into the file, about his diagnosis, prognosis and required treatment. “The conclusions expressed there illustrate that the detention unit has all the means to properly assist the inmate, although emphasis was placed on the fact that given the pathology he suffers, the adequacy of the treatment and its compliance, in order to achieve the glycemic and metabolic goals, largely fall within their individual scope of responsibility. That is, the collaboration that the patient provides to achieve the objectives of his treatment is of particular importance,” stated the ruling to which he agreed. Infobae.

And he added: “it is not noted, nor was it proven in the incident, how, under family care at home, the inmate could receive medical care with better benefits than those provided in a medical institution such as the UMA of the Penitentiary Complex. Federal II by Marcos Paz”. Based on that, the judge stated that “the granting of house arrest is inadmissible.” However, he urged the prison authorities to monitor the detainee’s condition in which the court is informed every 15 days about his health.

Now, the Federal Chamber will review Zanchetta’s request for freedom and it is likely that the demand for domiciliary status will also arrive, by separate order.

In the case, there is another detainee: Ezequiel Nuñes Pinheiro, the missionary hacker who has also been imprisoned for 5 months and who participated in the maneuvers to hack the cell phones of several judges, in addition to the former Buenos Aires Security Minister Marcelo D’Alessandro and the then deputy Diego Santilli. Judges Boico and Irurzun rejected his release in the last days of December: the case is institutionally serious and is characterized by the clandestine and hidden way in which its authors handled themselves. It is still not known who else was behind the maneuvers and they urged the judge to speed up the investigations

Last November, prosecutor Pollicita maintained that Zanchetta was an inorganic spy for the former SIDE and the AFI from 2009 to the present. The accused denied the charges and assured that he was investigating the judges because he was a journalist. But from the analysis of his devices it emerged that he also had files of different reports and intelligence tasks on politicians, leaders, journalists and judges. The prosecutor asked to investigate him again and also accused three AFI agents and the former AFIP official and man from La Cámpora, Fabián Nestor “Conu” Rodríguez, for being linked to these maneuvers.

The thing is that, according to some photos that he saved on his cell phone, “Conu” Rodriguez, then Deputy Director General of Taxpayer Service, entrusted Zanchetta on October 9, 2022 with the preparation of a “report” and a journalistic note to publish against the target and confirms that he continues “reporting” to him. The target was the Minister of Social Development, Victoria Tolosa Paz. Two days later, Zanchetta did his searches in SudamericaData, a firm that was also under the scrutiny of investigators due to the suspicion that it worked with data “from unknown sources” and without official authorization. Then, the “journalistic” note against the then minister appeared. The order was paid with a guideline from the province of Buenos Aires.

They did not find Rodríguez when they went to look for him at the AFIP headquarters to seize his cell phone. The prosecutor assured that, according to records, he was in that building but hid from the police. Three days after that procedure, Pollicita requested his arrest and the judge rejected it. “Conu” appeared in court the next day and left his cell phone. Now, he is waiting to evaluate the contents of that device, along with the other computers seized from his house. He has not yet been investigated. The prosecution accused him of being a participant in the espionage maneuvers.

There is another accused in the case: the deputy Rodolfo Tailhade, a member of the Judicial Council and one of the most critical Kirchnerist voices about Comodoro Py and the Supreme Court. For this reason she is now recovering from a kidney transplant. His accusation in the case was the result of another file being incorporated into the case where D’Alessandro accused him of espionage for the intrusion into his phone. Tailhade was working in the area counterintelligence, after the departure of Antonio Stiuso and the creation of the AFI, as he himself confirmed in a radio interview in which he denounced an operation against him. Zanchetta had Tailhade as a contact, and a report from the DAJUDECO Court office detected conversations with the detained police officer, where he sent him or offered him information about the cases of Elisa Carrió, Senator Luis Juez or promised him material about the dialogues of judges who had gone to Lago Escondido when they were already becoming public.