A few days after the start of the oral trial, the Santa Cruz Justice suspended the oral trial for the crime of the CFK millionaire secretary

He oral trial against those accused of the crime of former secretary of Cristina Kirchner, Fabián Gutiérrez, assassinated on July 2, 2020 in El Calafate, will have to wait. It was going to start on September 4, but at the request of the brand new prosecutor Veronica Zuvic the Criminal Chamber of Río Gallegos, by two votes to one, resolved to postpone the debate until next March. The official cited the complexity of the case, the institutional seriousness and the accumulation of tasks. The defense agreed. But the victim's family was outraged and announced that they will appeal the resolution, according to what they told infobae judicial sources.

In an interview with FM Dimensión de la provincia, Teresa García, mother of Fabián Gutiérrez, said that the prosecutor's request to delay the trial was "a slap" for her and the family, who hopes to close this chapter in their history, with the sentencing of the three detainees.

Gutiérrez was Secretary of the Presidency of the Nation, between May 2003 and May 2005, and Deputy Secretary of the Presidency between December 2007 and January 2010, and before that he had been in different areas of the Government of Santa Cruz.

In 2011, Judge Claudio Bonadio had dismissed Fabián Gutiérrez and other former secretaries investigated for illicit enrichment. However, in 2017, the FIU denounced him for laundering and enrichment. The case was in the hands of judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi, until the case of Oscar Centeno's notes broke out and the file passed under the orbit of Claudio Bonadio.

Gutiérrez was prosecuted in the cause of the notebooks for concealment. He was imprisoned and became an accused collaborator. He got out of prison. Meanwhile, José López, the former Secretary of Public Works, heor accused of having given him the money that he took to the convent, although the oral court that convicted him of illicit enrichment understood that the money belonged to López and that the former official only sought to take advantage of the cause of the notebooks. That accusation was denied by the former official.

On July 2, 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Gutiérrez was assassinated, but his body was only found two days later: he was buried in a house in the Aeropuerto Viejo neighborhood. The experts revealed that Gutiérrez received "tortures that left several signs”. And they explained that he was mechanically suffocated with a piece of cable and that more than one person participated to exercise "corporal violence."

The former secretary of the Kirchners had two blows to the skull, on the forehead and on the left parietal. A strong blow to the eye, multiple blows and abrasions to the face and head. On his neck he had three punctures made with a "Tramontina-type knife" -which was found in Guitiérrez's house with blood-. Several drowning marks on the neck from pressure made with a cable. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation.

The defendants were Facundo Zaeta, Facundo Gómez and Pedro Monzón. It is suspected that he was taken advantage of and tortured into revealing where he had the money. They are accused of "double qualified homicide for cruelty and treachery and to prepare, facilitate, consummate or hide another crime or to ensure its results or seek impunity for themselves or for another, or for not having achieved the proposed purpose when attempting another crime." .

According to Zaeta, Gómez commissioned him to seduce Fabián Gutiérrez "to finalize a sexual encounter, then reduce him and cover his eyes to rob him." In his account, he recalled that Gomez told him about the money that Gutiérrez would have in cash at his home. According to this plan, the robbery would always have a point in favor: the illegal origin of the money in alleged acts of corruption would discourage Gutiérrez from reporting the assault "because it would bring him more quilombos and he could not justify what we stole from him."

The defendant pointed out that the seduction lasted two months with the sending of "photos of high sexual content and all kinds of comments to get his attention." Gómez always recommended "what to say" to his victim. “Facundo has been in the world of marijuana sales for a long time and hangs out with heavy people from Calafate”, he described about his accomplice.

According to Zaeta, the entire sequence consisted of a plan by Gómez. When the former Kirchner official picked him up on July 2, the assailants went to his house at 124 Perkic Street and there Zaeta confessed that he took the initiative: “Immediately inside, I hit him twice in the jaw, because I practice boxing, and I passed out”.

According to his version, Gómez continued to hit Gutiérrez and threatened to kill him after asking him where the money was, to which the victim replied “not knowing what money they are talking about”. "I know you have her, you're not going to lie to me, we know her, where is she," Gómez would have replied.

Monzón and Gómez hit him several times on the body and reduced him, and he asks me to look for the money upstairs...", Zaeta declared, and then recounted how the sequence of Gutiérrez's homicide occurred. “I see that Facundo Gómez brings a stone from the backyard of the house and hits it on Gutiérrez's head several times., until he almost burst it, not calm with that, he grabbed the rope and passed it around his neck, choking him”, he added.

At that moment, the young man came down from the upper room to recriminate him. "Are you crazy?! You told me that Fabian was not going to get hurt," he would have said in his statement. “I got really scared. My only purpose was to get the money, not leave Gutiérrez lifeless”, added the defendant.

“I am sure that he was right to kill him and he used Monzón and me to achieve his objective.Zaeta concluded. According to the investigation, the suspects hid the body - which they wrapped in a rug - and put it in the truck. They bathed in the barbecue area of ​​the house, changed their clothes, and then tried to throw everything away, along with the stone. They took the body to the cabin that Gómez rented.

For Zaeta, Facundo Gómez abandoned him along with Monzón to clean up the crime scene and then he "was going to take care of everything" with his contacts to leave the act unpunished. “He also told us to take the TV and the stereo with us,” he said. However, when they wanted to call him, the mastermind of the robbery insulted them and cut off their phone.

The murderers buried him in the patio of the house where Facundo Zaeta lived. He told the judge and the prosecutor Natalia Market -the niece of the vice president of the Nation and daughter of the governor Alice Kirchner- that the lifeless body was in the house, but when they arrived they did not find it. They did so after touring the surroundings and in a patio they discovered a sheet with blood, and the victim's body half buried under a tree.

The trial was about to start on September 4, but that decision came to nothing this Friday, at the request of the prosecution.

It may interest you "Gómez planned everything, I did not kill him": the version of the main suspect in the crime of Fabián Gutiérrez

According to the resolution to which he agreed Infobae, Judge Joaquín Cabral, president of the court, rejected the request of the Public Ministry. He said that the right to expedite the process is an unavoidable constitutional guarantee and that without the intention of discussing Zuvic's arguments, the requested extension is not provided for in the applicable Code of Criminal Procedure.

"A separate paragraph deserves the position adopted by the defense lawyers and without analyzing, much less criticizing their defensive strategy (...) I must say as a man of law and a magistrate responsible for enforcing the respect of the human rights and constitutional guarantees of the parties, he does not allow to surprise the accompanying unit at the request of the prosecutor even to the detriment of the interests of her clients, interests that would be seriously affected by the unjustified delay of an oral trial," said the magistrate. In this context, he spoke of a collapsed agenda until next March.

But her colleagues Alejandra Vila and Jorge Yance voted to grant the request. They complained because postponements are always requested for reasonable reasons and this time the president of the Chamber, Cabral, decided to ask the parties for their opinion. They said Zuvic took office only 15 days ago. And they said that the plaintiffs "must respond" for the interest they represent "but this court cannot ignore the situation raised by the official and must attend to her well-founded request."

The two judges also came out against their colleague. "Regarding the arguments of the opinionated colleague regarding the responsibility of the professionals who accompanied the prosecutor's petition, his consideration of the situation raised by the state prosecutor cannot be questioned, much less can it be concluded that they affect the interests of his defendants, since we would be talking about a delay, justified in our opinion, which would not exceed the month of November, since as it appears from the agenda (which in our case we set personally) you have the last week of November free and the remaining business days of month of December of the current year.

“It should be remembered that the responsibility that institutionally falls to the magistracy cannot be placed at the head of the lawyers, especially when there are more than ninety cases waiting to reach a definitive ruling (many of them for acts of a violent nature), to which that seems not to have been given the same prominence as the one that concerns us today, something that does not cause surprise but is striking. For the rest, not observing in the tax petition any irregular or harmful assumption of constitutional rights, since it is an extension that could be of no more than two months, nor does it affect the responsibility of these magistrates or other intervening lawyers , the required extension to which we make room is viable, and a new date for the debate hearing must be set for the period that is available on the agenda ”, they added.

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