Former Argentine Secretary of Commerce Sentenced to Three-Year Suspended Prison Sentence

Argentina's Federal Court on Wednesday sentenced the nation's former Secretary of Commerce, Guillermo Moreno, to three years of a suspended prison sentence and barred the former official from holding office for an additional six years following a court ruling that Moreno was responsible for the manipulation of data from 2006 to 2007 belonging to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), a government agency that collects and processes statistical information regarding the economy, population, and society..A Suspended Sentence.Moreno was granted a suspended sentence, allowing the former official to avoid spending time in an Argentine prison, leading some critics to speak against the relative lax punishment for a crime which occurred in public office. Criticisms regarding Moreno's lack of jail time have also focused on the former official's numerous other criminal investigations and convictions, with the latter including the misuse of public funds and threats made during a Papel Prensa shareholder meeting, a company which is the main supplier of newsprints in Argentina, in 2010..Charges included abuse of authority, violation of secrets, destruction of records and documents and ideological falsehood of public documents repeated on seven occasions according to Clarin, an Argentine news outlet..Three other officials were included in the trial, with the former director of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Beatriz Paglieri being issued the same sentence as Moreno while two other employees were acquitted on all charges with documents regarding this decision becoming public on September 4, 2024..During the trial, the prosecution stressed that through Moreno's actions the government's reputation was injured, leading to widespread distrust in government statistics by the general populace.."The intervention altered crucial indicators such as the CPI, which affected poverty measurements, and these manipulations have led to widespread distrust of official statistics. Moreno led the maneuver. He exercised the necessary pressure to achieve the consummation of the crimes," prosecutor Diego Luciani told the court during the trial..Moreno's attacked the trial itself in a statement to the court, claiming that the case suffered from a lack of evidence before labeling the trial as "academic," alluding that the process laid more in line with the theoretical rather than concrete evidence.."My training is as an economist, but I have had some law courses. There is an old saying that goes something like facts, evidence, and law," Moreno told the court following his sentence. "[In the investigation] no evidence emerged. No one can say if something is false or true without evidence."."We must acknowledge that the prosecutor's argument was intelligent. He had no evidence. And so he resorted to an academic trial. Now, as you know, academic trials can be conducted by peers, not by the prosecutor," the former officials stated during the end of his statement. "Facts, evidence, and law. There was no evidence, so I doubt there will be law."