The oral and public trial against the former mayor of Lambaré, Armando Ramón Gómez Arévalo (PLRA), and other former municipal officials accused of being part of an alleged criminal scheme to divert revenue from municipal tax payments began this Monday, the 29th. The Specialized Economic Crimes Sentencing Tribunal, presided over by Judge Adriana Planas and including Elsa García and Matías Garcete, is analyzing the evidence presented by the parties.
The Public Prosecutor's Office's accusation maintains that the scheme operated through irregular cancellations of tax payment invoices, carried out outside of business hours and using unauthorized users in the city hall's computer system. The objective was to temporarily withhold daily revenue deposits and remit them to banking entities late, in order to circumvent administrative controls and alter accounting records.
According to the investigation, the irregularities occurred between January 24 and October 25, 2019. A total of 5,538 irregular cancellations were identified, amounting to G. 6,866,903,957. By adding cancellations made from different system users—identified as "ivillalba", "check", "jinfran", "rchirife", and "rricciardi"—the total reaches 6,390 cancellations, corresponding to an estimated patrimonial loss of G. 9,317,065,062 to the municipality.
Alongside Gómez, the former Director of Administration and Finance Roberto Ever Paredes Ojeda, the former head of the Treasury Department Rodrigo Javier Portillo Chirife, the former interim director of the Technology Management Directorate Edgar Iván Villalba Torreblanca, and the former employee of the same department Ricardo Ronald Ricciardi are standing trial. They are accused of theft, alteration of data relevant to evidence, fraud through computer systems, and criminal association.
The prosecution's theory describes a mechanism in which Portillo Chirife, as treasurer, handed over the daily revenue to Paredes Ojeda, who indicated the amounts to be subtracted each day. These sums were then forwarded to Villalba Torreblanca so he could proceed to cancel the invoices in the system. Bank deposits were made with deliberate delays, split across different days, to hinder the reconciliation between what was collected and what was actually deposited.
The start of the trial had been postponed four times since December 2025. The last rescheduling occurred on Tuesday, June 23, due to the medical rest of the accused Portillo Chirife. In the first hearing, the defense teams challenged the court's jurisdiction and presented motions for partial annulment of the charges, statute of limitations for some facts, and inclusion and exclusion of evidence. The Public Prosecutor's Office, represented by prosecutor Luis Piñanez, is expected to respond to the challenges in the next session, scheduled for Wednesday, July 1, at 11:30 a.m.