​​‘Cuadernos’ corruption case: Forensic experts confirm graft log was written by driver

A new forensic court report has concluded that the controversial notebooks at the heart of the ‘Causa de los cuadernos’ investigation were written by a single author, bolstering claims of their authenticity.

The examination, conducted by Gendarmería experts, found that the notebooks – attributed to former Federal Planning Ministry chauffeur Oscar Centeno and said to detail a vast corruption scheme that operated during the Kirchner governments – were indeed his work. 

But the report also acknowledged deletions and alterations whose authorship could not be verified.

The findings, based on calligraphic analysis by the Border Guard’s División Documentología y Pericias Caligráficas (“Documentology and Handwriting Division”), add to two earlier studies by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Federal Police.

This latest handwriting analysis was carried out on the originals, kept by the judges in a safe, and on digitised copies, according to judicial sources.

The study noted the absence of one original – notebook five – as well as erasures and changes in another, whose authorship could not be established.

Nevertheless, it concluded that there is “correspondence between the original notebooks identified as 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8, and their respective digital copies.”

In addition, the experts agreed in attributing authorship to Centeno, a collaborating witness in the case, on the basis of a comparison with a body of writing produced by the former driver in court.

Key elements

The reports will be seen as key elements in a trial set to begin on November 6 where the main defendants will be ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, ex-minister Julio De Vido and his ex-secretary Roberto Baratta, as well as numerous businessmen.

In their conclusions, Border Guard public calligraphers Commander Nelson Víctor Vallejos and Lilia Patricia Sendra Schamne, established that the manuscripts in notebooks 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8 "are all in the same handwriting” as Centeno’s. 

They also assured that digital copies circulated by the court coincide with the originals. 

“The manuscripts of Mr Oscar Centeno were produced freely and spontaneously, with swift and agile movements, revealing graphic features consistent with his writing profile,” the report stated.

However, the experts noted a third notebook presents adulterations whose authorship it is impossible to identify. The handwriting experts reported that the notes were written with different pens over different periods of time.

“The difficulty of identification has to do with the lack of spontaneity in the added writing where the neuromotor drive is controlled by the will,” pointed out the forensic experts about the fragments where the authorship could not be established.

Among the fragments which could not be identified because they were deleted, written over or changed figure “Ing. Ferreyra” (December 2, 2008), “Armando” (August 29, 2013), “Armando” (September 10, 2013), “Alem 855” (July 25, 2013) and “Alem 855” (September 10, 2013); “Azucena Villaflor -491 y Aime Paine”; “Santiago Altieri 1544406058”; “Jmp, Azucena Villa Flor 450 piso 25 dpto 03 Torre Boulevard Complejo Le Parc Pro Madero” and “3 ar febrero 2750 Vicente,” among others.

The experts also noted that the original of the fifth notebook is missing.

The forensic tests carried out by the Border Guard were ordered by the judges Fernando Canero, Enrique Méndez Signori and Germán Castelli of the TOF (Tribunal Oral y Federal)7 court, where the trial will be held in the months to come

Background

The 'Cuadernos' case centres on the alleged collection of bribes in return for the awarding of public works contracts. The probe owes its name to notebooks allegedly kept by Centeno, Baratta’s chauffeur at the Federal Planning Ministry.

According to prosecutors, business figures made illegal payments to state officials during the Kirchernite governments in order to win multi-billion-peso contracts for infrastructure projects.Prosecutors allege Fernández de Kirchner, who served as president from 2007 to 2015, was at the centre of an illegal bribery ring.

Fernández de Kirchner denies the allegations against her and claims they are part of an organised plot of “judicial and political persecution” designed to soil her reputation and place her behind bars.

Defence lawyers have reportedly cast doubt over the veracity of the notebooks and have requested that Centeno provide a “handwriting sample” for comparison.

Centeno allegedly wrote eight notebooks, keeping travel logs of visits to businesspeople who had dealings with the government for the payment of bribes.

Centeno was fearful about his notebooks and entrusted them to a friend, an ex-policeman called Jorge Bacigalupo who eventually delivered them to La Nación journalist Diego Cabot.

After a group of former officials and a businessman were arrested, the case came into the limelight and expanded further as a number of the accused signed whistleblower agreements to turn state witness and avoid jail terms.

Previous tests

Two other forensic examinations were previously carried out on the orders of federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi, on the basis of the alterations of Centeno’s notebooks denounced by the businessmen Armando Loson and Gerardo Ferreyra.

The tests were made by the División Scopometría of the Federal Police and by UBA’s Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the former being a calligraphic analysis of the texts and the latter linguistic. 

The Federal Police detected differences between the early notebooks registering the trips and the later ones noting the money presumably collected. They identified notebooks 7 and 8 as presenting changes and deletions while the handwriting was more slanted and hastier, indicating dictation. They further pointed out that those notebooks had signs corresponding to the handwriting of the ex-policeman linked to Centeno, Jorge Bacigalupo.

UBA’s forensic tests also maintain that there are differences between the early notebooks, written between 2008 and 2009, and the later ones, written between 2013 and 2015, which do not permit the same “profile for the author” to be defined. 

Along those lines, the linguistics specialist concluded that “there is a diversification of vocabulary and syntax, the use of anomalous and incomplete structures. That could be due to interference, contamination and people talking who do not correspond to the writer’s profile” and that “the phenomena of deleting and writing bring into question that the addressee is the same. The evolution of the profile over time is not consistent. The stylometric data confirm the differences.”

On the basis of those elements, judge Martínez de Giorgi sent Bacigalupo to trial for the additions and changes in the 4th and 7th notebooks but the Federal Appeals Court overruled that decision and acquitted him.

– TIMES/NA/PERFIL