A Santa Fe police officer has been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice after giving false testimony in a trial to cover up for a man accused of being an accomplice to a homicide and an attempted homicide.
Catriel Orlando Giordano, 42, was sentenced by Judge Celeste Minniti to four years in prison for the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, and he was also given an eight-year absolute disqualification from holding public office.
During the investigation, it was proven that on November 16, 2016, as part of a criminal investigation into the homicide of Carlos Alberto Farías and an attempted homicide, Giordano had to testify as a witness due to his role as an official at the Seventh precinct of Regional Unit I of the police.
According to the document from the Public Prosecutor's Office, accessed by the Argentine News Agency, at the time the officer falsely stated that the accused, Darío Miguel Bergallo, "had been detained until minutes before 18:00".
In this sense, it was found that "this false statement was made to help Bergallo evade the investigation against him," which did not succeed because, in the end, he was convicted as an accomplice and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Giordano was not the only police officer convicted. In 2021, María Josefina Bettique was sentenced to three years in prison. She also worked at the Seventh precinct.
"Bettique was the one who generated the apocryphal procedure report, with the aim of contributing to Bergallo evading the investigation," they reported and added that the accused "falsely stated that he had been transferred to the Seventh precinct".
