The former judge of Misdemeanors of Zapala, María Delia Sánchez, was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for the crime of abuse of authority, committed while he was in office between 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, the lawyer Claudio Brusco received a sentence of one month in prisonalso conditional, for concealment by fraudulent reception.
Sánchez and Brusco had been declared responsible for the respective crimes in a trial that took place in August of last year in Zapala, and this Tuesday the sentences they must serve were announced.
The court ruled unanimously. It was made up of Maximiliano Bagnat, in charge of reading the ruling, Marco Lúpica Cristo and Carolina González. The accusation was in charge of the chief prosecutor Sandra González Taboada, the prosecutor of the case Laura Pizzipaulo and the private complainant José María Díaz Villar. Pablo Tommasini (Brusco) and Pablo Méndez (Sánchez) served as defenders.
without aggravation
The accusing parties they had requested higher amounts: 1 year and 8 months for Sánchez and 2 years and 10 months for Brusco.
As Bagnat explained on Tuesday, the Court he did not find accredited aggravating factorsand that is why he imposed the legal minimum provided for each case. He considered as mitigating the lack of prior records of both defendants.
The former judge of Faltas was dismissed by impeachment in February 2022, and was imposed a disqualification for 5 years to hold office in the municipality.
Sentence
As the Court found proven, Sánchez knew that it was bound by the Municipal Organic Charter to send you all unpaid fines to the administrative prosecutor’s office. That body could bring offenders to trial or refer them to a lawyer empowered, at their discretion.
But Sánchez, Judge González said in explaining the verdict, delivered the fines directly to the lawyer Brusco. “I knew that with this way of proceeding I was concretizing a practice contrary to the Municipal Organic Charter”he claimed.
The maneuver of which Sánchez and Brusco were found guilty did not cause damage to the public treasury. In any case, if the lawyer had come to collect fees that did not belong to him, the victims they could have been the neighbors who paid them.