Americo Balbuena poses on a light blue background. He has a light-toned T-shirt, a shaved face, prominent dark eyebrows, and a bald head. It looks like this in the passport photo of the press credential he used for a decade to introduce himself as a “correspondent” from Rodolfo Walsh News Agency.
On the top left of the card, both front and back the face of the journalist who gives the media its name is printed popular. On the back, a text typical of journalists’ credentials predominates. “The bearer of this is protected by law 12,908 in his journalistic work. We ask the authorities for all collaboration for his performance”it reads.
Balbuena came to the agency in 2002 after a stint at FM The Tribe, where they saw him with some mistrust. He entered hand in hand with his director and founder, Rodolfo Grinbergwith whom he had gone to school and a few years later he had met again in one of the massive mobilizations of December 2001 that ended with the resignation of the then president Fernando de la Rua.
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Since then, Balbuena began to work as a journalist for the agency, which focused its agenda on all the news that the mass media ignore. Were plenary meetings of social organizations, assemblies, protests in factories, escraches and other activities that summoned this pseudo-journalist to approach militants, take out his recorder and start asking questions.
According to the elevation to trial signed in March 2020 by the former judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corralwho was in charge of the investigation, Balbuena obtained information from organizations such as the Association of Disappeared Former Detainees, the Liberpueblo Association, the Argentine League for Human Rights, the CUBA-MTR Movement and the Socialist Workers Party, among others. .
From chronicles like “The Walsh Spy”, published by Amphibianit follows that Balbuena I was eager to ask. More than anything else, he wanted to know, to go further, to know what were the steps to follow in the fight plans of the organizations or, even, the internal ones that those who formed them had. That information reached, through her, the Federal Police, where they were waiting for her. Alfonso Ustares and Alejandro Sanchezheads of the Analysis Division.
A fact ended with the lie
Eleven years after his infiltration, a piece of information reached the Walsh Agency. As the days went by, it was confirmed and turned into a complaint: on May 5, 2013, Nilda Garréformer Minister of Security, announced the start of a summary investigation and made Balbuena available, who he would have pretended to be a journalist for 11 years without counting that he was actually part of the federal force.
This, together with the two police officers mentioned in the paragraph before, will face an oral and public trial from this Tuesday, March 14, accused of abuse of authority and breach of duties of a public official.
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The complaint from the Walsh Agency became a legal case that was filed in Comodoro Py, with instructions from the former federal judge Canicoba Corral.
Ustares and Sánchez, meanwhile, were blamed by Justice “have ordered and/or promotedformally or informally, in his capacity as Head of the Analysis Division of the State and Security Department of the Federal Police (…) who balbuenain his capacity as intelligence officer of the aforementioned unit and hiding information” develop espionage tasks in the news agency.
What will the trial be like?
The oral and public process will start tomorrow at 12 noon in the Sala Amia de Commodore Py. The other two hearings will be on Wednesday the 15th from 9:30 a.m. and Thursday the 16th from 12 noon. They are expected to testify in court Daniel Rafecas and the prosecutors Carlos Stornelli and Ariel Quety about 15 witnesses.
According to what PROFILE learned, Rodolfo Grimberg (Walsh Agency), Carlos Lordkipanidse, Claudio Dellecarbonara, Maria del Carmen Verdu and Alejandro De Massi (FM The Tribe). On Wednesday, in turn, it will be the turn of the leftist leaders Cristian Castillo, Gabriel Solano, Vilma Ripoll, Juan Carlos Giordano, and Oscar Castelnovo (Walsh Agency). The former adviser to the Ministry of Security and former minister of Santa Fe is also cited. Marcelo Saín
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The hearings will end on Thursday with Diana Kordón, computer expert Matías Castellani and two witnesses proposed by the defense: they are Roberto Zegame, president of the Chamber of Provincial Specialized Services for Passenger Transport and Javier Echeverría, from the Analysis Division of the PFA to which the defendants belonged.
The plaintiffs will be Matthias Aufieri, Myriam Bregman, Liliana Mazea and Paul Platkowski.
“It cost, it took many years. We believe that there is a lot of evidence and that if it came to trial it is because everything goes in the direction of achieving a conviction beyond how brief they are“said Aufieri in statements to PROFILE.
The penalty provided for in the figure is two years plus disqualification, with no expectation of imprisonment. “It is a very broad figure that is applied to them when there are no more specific penalties. It was not until 2015 that the Intelligence Law was reformed, which set more specific and more serious penalties.“, he indicated.
“By the very regulations that organize the Information Corps of the Federal, although they could have other occupations such as screen, there were specific prohibitions like being in a news agency. Here there is already a violation of the law and that is why the accusation fits,” he said regarding one of the main tests against Balbuena.
cp
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