Ricardo Jaime, former Secretary of Transportation during the Once Tragedy, was released after seven years in the Ezeiza prison. The decision was agreed by the majority of the judges of the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 7.
The release took place during the early hours of the morning and was due to the “delicate state of health.” He will remain under house arrest and an electronic anklet was placed on him, for which he entered the GPS monitoring system belonging to the Assistance Program for Persons Under Electronic Surveillance.
Thus, the “cessation of the pretrial detention of the detainee Ricardo Raúl Jaime was confirmed, once the term established in the resolution issued on September 15, 2022 had expired.”
“The immediate release of the person appointed from the Warden of the Superintendence of Federal Investigations of the Argentine Federal Police will be ordered, once it has been verified that he does not register an order restricting his freedom,” the resolution highlighted.
Ricardo Jaime carried out the functions of Secretary of Transportation between 2003 and 2009. He was arrested in 2016 and convicted of the Once Tragedy. Last year, from the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation, the sentence for “culpable havoc” was revoked and charges were imposed for “fraudulent administration” that provides for 6 to 7 years in prison.
During 2022, Jaime was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the acquisition of “junk trains” brought from Spain and Portugal. He was also accused of illicit enrichment, although the latter has not yet been confirmed.
Your health
His health problems were what granted him release under supervision. On March 13, the Federal Penitentiary Service approached TOF 7 with a report detailing that the detainee “has essential arterial hypertension, is a former smoker, suffers from subclinical hypothyroidism, hyperglycemia, a benign nodule in the lung, a reactive depression and a lobulated basal cell carcinoma”.
Judge Méndez Signori, one of those who supported this measure, explained: “The existence of a delicate health condition on the part of Jaime warrants the relaxation of the precautionary measures, since it is clear that, beyond the chronic pathologies that suffers, over time there has been a situation of deterioration of his health and his general clinical state.
Ricardo Jaime has the obligation to notify any change in the declared address, inform if he will be absent from home for more than 48 hours or more than 70 kilometers. He had to hand over his passport and is prohibited from leaving the country without prior authorization.
