The No Trafficking Team National Justice and Peace Commission -belonging to the CEA- detailed in the writing: ”We express our deepest concern given the dissolution of the Direct Assistance Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking created by Law 27,508 of 2019. This mechanism eliminated under a presidential Decree, it was effectively a democratic Law that represented an authentic demand from victims and survivors, promoted by the Executive Branch and voted in Congress with a broad consensus of all political forces and the support of civil society organizations.”
At the same time, they highlighted that the ”Assistance Fund is an instrument that had as its objective the administration of assets confiscated in judicial cases referring to the crimes of human trafficking and exploitation, and money laundering derived from such crimes, with the end of these being intended to repair the damage caused to the victims”. And they added: ”It did not consume money from the public treasurybut rather they were assets from crime that the State should administer.”
”In a recent work by the Office of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Office (PROTEX)a statistical survey was prepared based on the reparation of trafficking victims in convictions in Argentina between the years 2019 and 2022. In this period, 107 convictions were issued, of which 27 (25.2%) were carried out. some type of economic reparation for the victims,” they detailed, assuring that they “reached 168 victims for a total of more than 70 million pesos (strictly speaking, 70,823,001.20 pesos) and 16,141 dollars, in addition to the equivalent of 192 minimum wages and 3 vehicles used for the same purposes.”
Finally, they asserted that the fact “represents a recoil in terms of reparation and restitution of victims’ rights, which cannot wait and the only thing that these types of measures do is turn them into victims again, abandoned by those who should be protected”.
What was the trust fund for?
The Assistance Fund for Victims of Trafficking that the national Government eliminated was generally contemplated in Law 26,364, sanctioned under the management of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But according to the NGO The Alameda In its statement repudiating the measure, that fund was also validated by other efforts, specifically created by Law 27,508 under the government of Mauricio Macri, and put into operation during the administration of Alberto Fernandez.
The fund, as La Alameda warned, represented a vindication of one of the historical demands of anti-trafficking organizations: in what was in force it compensated 498 people, for a total of $562,273,494.93.
“Today and thanks to the faculties that the call Law Bases grants to the national government, it was decided to eliminate five trust funds, including the one technically called Direct Assistance Fund for Victims of Trafficking“, the entity warned, and clarified that it was “a mechanism through which surviving victims of trafficking were financially compensated with a final judicial ruling.”
“In this way, and through two brief lines, it is intended to put an end to a State public policy that took years to build,” he added.
According to La Alameda, The instrument fulfilled the objective of directly repairing the victimbut also symbolically to the entire society, since when assets were detected that had been instruments of crime in cases of trafficking and exploitation, these were liquidated through the AABE (State Property Administration Agency) and, with the proceeds of your sale, victims of trafficking were compensated.
The possibility of maintaining the assets was also contemplated to prevent them from losing their value during the processing of the trial, something that in our country can take 8 or 10 years. In this way – La Alameda continued – the property was prevented from depreciating, for example by renting a premises or an apartment or transferring it as a loan for temporary use, in order to be able to liquidate it once the final judgment was obtained and the victim(s) had been identified.
What the Government said to eliminate it
The national government’s arguments to justify the elimination refer to an alleged audit that would have revealed “the nonexistence of a formalized procedures manual, shortcomings observed in the Trust Contract and the nonexistence of a Computer System for the management of the executive unit.”
But according to the NGO, in the case of the fund to assist victims of trafficking “the lack of control was almost impossible”since in addition to the AABE, the Executing Unit of the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Trafficking Council intervened: the reparations were authorized and informed in front of representatives of all the provinces and the City of Buenos Aires, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Legislative Branch, Ombudsman of the Nation and three representatives of civil society organizations through a commission created with the objective of following and monitoring its operation.
On the other hand, and considering that this mechanism was implemented based on a contract signed between the national state and the BICE (Bank for Investment and Foreign Trade), it was also subject to the controls of the Central Bank and even the National Securities Commission. .
In order to expedite its implementation and appropriation by the justice system, the Office of the Prosecutor for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons -PROTEX- presented in 2023 the guide for prosecutors on the operation of the trust fund, the document was prepared jointly with the General Directorate of Asset Recovery and Asset Forfeiture.
Source: Ambito
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