Olivos Gate: Florencia Peña's complaint against two Cambiemos deputies dismissed

The Buenos Aires Federal Chamber ordered to file a complaint filed by actress and host Florencia Peña against the national deputies of Juntos for Change, Waldo Wolff and Fernando Iglesias, whom it accused of making misogynistic and sexist comments on Twitter, after their visit to the fifth presidential in Olivos, during the quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, Iglesias posted a tweet stating: “For me, the lady was going to help him (the President) find the knob that ignites the economy to put Argentina on its feet.” Wolff replied: “But she's not on her knees?” And then he added: “I was referring to the economy.”

The actress's complaint attributed to the tweets a sexual connotation that violated commitments undertaken by the Argentine State to eradicate gender-based violence.

Then, Peña filed a complaint in August 2021 for “discrimination and non-compliance with the rights of public servants, media gender violence, institutional and symbolic” against both deputies, who attacked her after it became known that in the middle of quarantine she had visited the fifth presidential of Olivos.

In that complaint, the actress clarified that the visit to Alberto Fernández in May 2020 had the “sole purpose of the president taking steps to develop strategies to improve the Audiovisual Industry”.

The case was investigated by federal judge Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi. Wolff called on the magistrate to dismiss the complaint under an “exception for lack of action”, which means that the conduct attributed to him does not constitute a crime. De Giorgi rejected his claim, and Wolff appealed to the Federal Chamber.

Yesterday the Federal Chamber decided to file the complaint. The ruling was voted by a majority by judges Martín Irurzun and Eduardo Farah, with the dissent of the camarista and former lawyer of Cristina Kirchner, Roberto Boico. They said that the lawmakers' claims are “questionable”, but they do not constitute the crime of abuse of authority by a public official.

They considered that the sayings of Wolf and Iglesias “of a certain questionable tenor because of the way in which they referred to some of the people they alluded to” were connected “with the contingencies of their lives as national deputies in party politics and were linked to their individual vision of events that occurred in the fifth Presidential of Olivos that took public status at the time” and not with their capacity as officials.

“It is not the order of dismissal (which the defense requested) but the archiving of the proceedings” due to “impossibility of proceeding”, concluded the camarists Martín Irurzun and Eduardo Farah, according to the resolution to which Infobae had access.

Both camaristas understood that the facts do not correspond to the crimes reported and that if there is any form of violation of honour or a contraventional crime, it must be processed in other ways, and they rejected the proposal of Wolf's defense to issue the dismissal but filed the case because the possible crimes did not are part of what happened, as a result of the defendant's status as a national deputy.

“If action on other hypotheses - the substantiation of which follows procedures other than this - is promoted by procedurally appropriate channels, this area should be conducive to dealing with the remaining issues raised in the incident,” they concluded.

In his vote in dissent and in favor of moving forward with the cause, the camarist Boico stressed that the “immunity of opinion” that legislators have should not be understood “as a neutralizer or obstacle to the conduct of a criminal investigation, as long as what is propalled constitutes - hypothetically - a statement that express a case of gender - based violence”.

“Here, for now, both accusers hold that hypothesis, so I will apply such a decisive criterion” that the investigation should be continued. Peña's complaint may appeal the judgment to the Chamber of Cassation and the debate will continue.

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