‘Cuadernos’ case: Former Techint director confirms near US$1mn payment to Baratta

A former top executive at the giant Italian-Argentine conglomerate Techint confirmed in court in Buenos Aires on Tuesday that he oversaw cash deliveries totalling close to US$1 million to former Kirchner government official Roberto Baratta.

Héctor Zabaleta, the former administrative director of Techint, told Argentina’s Oral Federal 7 court that he made six payments in pesos to Baratta, then the right-hand man of former Federal Planning minister Julio De Vido, during 2008.

At the latest hearing of the so-called ‘Cuadernos of corruption’ graft case, Zabaleta confirmed making the payments on the instructions of Luis Betnaza, then Institutional Relations director at Techint.

"Yes, it was true," he replied when questioned by prosecutor Fabiana León about information recorded in the notebooks of Oscar Centeno, Baratta’s former driver, which allegedly documented the official’s visits to Techint’s offices.

Graft case

The ‘Cuadernos’ case centres on allegations that businessmen paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials in exchange for public works contracts during the administrations of ex-presidents Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015).

Among those facing trial is former president Fernández de Kirchner, who has denied wrongdoing, along with a number of former officials and business figures.

According to prosecutors, business figures made illegal payments to state officials during the Kirchnerite governments in order to win multi-billion-peso contracts for infrastructure projects.

During his testimony, Zabaleta said each delivery to Baratta was for between 600,000 and 700,000 pesos, with the six payments together amounting to close to US$1 million.

"The instructions given to me by Betnaza were that they had to be close to US$1 million and that was more or less carried out with the delivery in pesos," he told the court.

Zabaleta also confirmed that the dates recorded in Centeno’s notebooks regarding meetings with Baratta were correct. The six visits took place between June and December 2008, with Zabaleta making the deliveries personally in an underground car park at Techint’s Puerto Madero offices.

According to his account, Centeno was never close to the meetings. The driver dropped Baratta off a few metres from the car park, while Baratta walked to his car, where Zabaleta "delivered the package" for him to return to his driver.

Zabaleta said Baratta had previously become annoyed when told that the delivery would be made in pesos rather than dollars. He recalled Baratta saying: "You’re going to have to give me dollars because if not, I’ll cut off the gas at your Campana plant."

Zabaleta said that, when Betnaza instructed him to make the payments, he contacted Techint’s office abroad and requested the equivalent of US$1 million in pesos in Buenos Aires. He said the money came from a fund containing company dividends and that he took custody of it to make the payments to Baratta.

Sidor nationalisation

The payments under investigation were linked to the controversial situation of the Sidor steel plant in Venezuela, which was controlled by the Techint Group when then-president Hugo Chávez governed in Caracas.

Venezuela moved to nationalise the company in 2008, immediately producing a tense face-off with the plant’s workers, with episodes of violence and workers facing difficulties securing their exit from the country.

Betnaza, who also testified on Tuesday, confirmed that he had instructed Zabaleta to make the payments. He linked them to costs arising from the repatriation of Argentine workers and their families from Venezuela in 2008.

According to Betnaza, Techint had asked the Kirchner government, which maintained close ties with Chávez, to intervene in the crisis surrounding the steel plant. He said the government responded that it would only take responsibility for Argentine workers.

"That is when the request for an economic contribution comes in to cover the costs of getting the other people out, who were not Argentines," Betnaza told the court.

According to the courts, the payments were made in that context and were intended to persuade Fernández de Kirchner’s government to intervene on behalf of Techint and help secure the workers’ departure.

‘Emergency’

Both Zabaleta and Betnaza were initially prosecuted over the payments to Baratta, but their cases were dealt with separately from the broader corruption proceedings after the courts concluded that the payments had been made in the context of an emergency and were different from the alleged bribes linked to public works.

In 2020, Judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi revoked the proceedings against Betnaza and Zabaleta, and Judge Julián Ercolini later dismissed the cases against them, as well as against Techint chief executive Paolo Rocca.

The company has stressed that the payments were not "bribes" but "improper payments."

At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, and at other points during the proceedings, the court warned the two witnesses about their legal situation and the risk of self-incrimination, reminding them that they had the right to remain silent.

Both nevertheless answered questions from the prosecution, Baratta’s defence and the UIF, the Financial Information Unit, which is a plaintiff in the case.

The reasons for the payments remained partly unclear during the testimony. Zabaleta said he knew Baratta was a senior government official and De Vido’s second-in-command, but that he did not know why he was being paid.

Betnaza, for his part, said he had not known how the money would ultimately be used, but had agreed to the request because of what he described as an emergency.

The court had previously separated the payments from the broader corruption allegations, concluding that they had taken place in an emergency context.

– TIMES/NA/PERFIL