The charges were serious: “Wrongful death aggravated by negligent, reckless and illegal driving” of a boat that rammed another, causing the death of Tamara suetta, 25 years old. This plus the “serious injuries” suffered by the young woman’s parents, who were with her in the other boat. The defendant was a lawyer with a known surname: Manuel Beccar Varela. He could have suffered an effective prison sentence, but the name was saved in a legal negotiation, which ended with an apology and the payment of a “significant sum of money.” Consequently, neither judgment nor the disgrace of being convicted.
The tragic accident occurred on March 23, 2018, in the Delta del Tigre. That night, Beccar Varela was driving his boat “Bicuña”, accompanied by some friends. In the investigation of the case, it was found that he was alcoholic (0.83 grams of alcohol in blood when the maximum allowed is 0.50) and that, in addition, he was going against the road when he took the curve of the Carapachay river in which the impact. Three people in the other boat fell into the water. Tamara died instantly because the boat that Beccar Varela was driving hit her square in the body. Her seriously injured parents Angel Suetta and Elena Fontini were rescued by a neighbor who jumped into the brown waters to save them from imminent death.
The prosecutor of Tigre Mariano Magat he was the one who sustained the original accusation. The harsh indictment had a sentence of up to five years, only for “aggravated manslaughter”, plus what could be added the “serious injuries” of the parents of the fatal victim. In the San Isidro courts, where he processed the case that has now been closed by the agreement between the parties, it was considered that the eventual sentence could have been greater than three years. That would have meant spending time behind bars.
The prosecutor Magat considered in the decision to raise the case that due to the consumption of alcohol the “reflections and perception” of Beccar Varela “could have been diminished.” What happened was “clearly”, according to the prosecutor, a serious omission of the duty of care that the driver of the boat that caused the accident should maintain. The crash occurred around eight o’clock at night.
After more than three years of conversations, the lawyer with the famous last name who killed a young woman with his boat reached an agreement with the victim’s family and the trial is not held.
In this way, Manuel Beccar Varela got the Justice to close the case after an agreement that arrived at the last minute. The Justice will file the case and the lawyer will be dismissed, because the deal does not oblige him to accept his responsibility in the fact, in such a way that he will be “clean of guilt and charge,” said a judicial source.
The mediation was closed a few weeks ago, in a hearing that had been set to agree on the guidelines of the oral trial. It was achieved by the lawyer, who has a long history, many resources and activities that even led him to occupy public positions, between 1999 and 2001, in the Ministry of Justice of the province of Buenos Aires, during the administration of Carlos Ruckauf.
The hearing was held at Correctional Court 1 of San Fernando, where Beccar Varela offered to comply with the punishment with a probation, which includes an offer to repair damage to the Suetta family with “a very important amount of money,” according to what was revealed. For a long time, the lawyer had raised the possibility of a settlement “on the table”, to avoid the trial. As said, the agreement does not in any way imply the acceptance of blame by Beccar Varela. The hearing was brief and the accused, until now, acknowledged that a life “has no price,” as it became known through sources close to the mediation. In this context, the sum of money was just an apology.
Through the corridors of the Court, they say that the shadow of Don Francisco de Quevedo was walking: “They are his main parents,
and he is of noble descendants (…) a powerful gentleman is Don Dinero ”and even more so if he bears the double surname Beccar Varela.
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