Public works tycoon Lázaro Báez yesterday presented an affidavit before the Federal Court of the Santa Cruz province to push back an investigation in which he was accused of giving millions of pesos to former and late President Néstor Kirchner and current head of state Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to rent their hotels in the southern province.

“I put before this tribunal the facts that are being attributed to me, saying these acts are of a criminal nature,” Báez wrote, before saying he is a victim of “media harassment.”

His presentation took place after newspaper La Nación revealed that Báez paid the Kirchners millions of pesos to rent hotel rooms in Las Dunas and Alto Calafate, in the Santa Cruz province, and that those rents were made through the Austral Construcciones company that has won several contracts for public works in the district.

“I am being reviled by two economic groups — or media owners — which act together to include me, almost daily, on an endless saga of crime,” Báez said in a four-page presentation.

According to the tycoon, there is a “clear modus operandi” by which claims are first published in a certain newspaper under the figure of alleged criminal acts “and then certain lawmakers, lawyers or unkown associations” file a criminal lawsuit.

The series of stories were first published last weekend in La Nación by investigative journalist Hugo Alconada Mon.

Báez argued that the journalist had violated his privacy becaused he has used confidential information including banking information currently protected by secrecy laws.

—Herald with DyN

PRO members file criminal lawsuit.

Centre-right PRO party lawmakers yesterday filed a criminal lawsuit against members of the Impeachment Tribunal who voted in favour of suspending prosecutor José María Campagnoli, who was investigating public works tycoon Lázaro Báez.The lawsuit was filed by lawmakers Patricia Bullrich, Pablo Tonelli and Cornelia Schmidt Liermann, and ended up in the Criminal Tribunal No. 9 led by Judge Luis Osvaldo Rodríguez.The presentation affects the head of the Impeachment Tribunal Ernesto Kreplak, Prosecutor Daniel Adler, Senate representative Rodolfo María Ojea Quintana and Minors’ Ombudswoman María Cristina Martínez Córdoba. They were all accused of “abuse of authority.”