Cuadernos trial to expand to twice weekly as judges demand historic courtroom

The judges overseeing Argentina's sprawling corruption trial—the Cuadernos de las Coimas case—announced this week that they will nearly double their hearing schedule, moving to sessions twice weekly beginning November 25. The decision came wrapped in a pointed fourteen-page resolution read aloud at the start of court on the morning of the announcement, one that served as both a capitulation to mounting pressure and a formal rebuke to the judicial hierarchy that has been criticizing them.

The three magistrates—Enrique Méndez Signori, Fernando Canero, and Germán Castelli—have been summoned by Argentina's Federal Chamber of Criminal Appeals for next week, where they will face demands to accelerate the trial beyond its current once-weekly pace and to conduct proceedings in person rather than over Zoom. Some higher-court judges have even suggested canceling summer recess to keep the trial moving. The lower court's response was to announce they would add a second Tuesday session to their existing Thursday schedule, while also requesting use of the historic Human Rights Hall—the same courtroom where Argentina tried its military junta leaders decades ago—to conduct defendant interrogations in a hybrid format that would allow both physical and remote participation.

But the judges made clear they were not simply bowing to pressure. In their resolution, they documented six years of unmet requests for resources, staff, and adequate facilities—pleas made to the Supreme Court, the Judicial Council, and the Appeals Chamber since 2019 that went largely ignored until this week's public criticism. They had asked repeatedly for additional personnel contracts, physical office space, and a suitable courtroom. The Supreme Court sent them to the Appeals Chamber. The Appeals Chamber sent them elsewhere. When they finally requested a hearing room on July 15 of this year, their petition was archived without response. The judges wanted the record to show they had been asking for help all along.

The practical constraints are real. Trial Court 7 operates from the Palace of Justice on Talcahuano Street, not from the main courthouse complex at Comodoro Py where most federal courts are housed. All the case materials—mountains of documents in a sprawling corruption investigation—are stored there. The judges initially tried to start the trial on Zoom because no suitable in-person courtroom was available. The Appeals Chamber president, Daniel Petrone, did offer them use of the AMIA trial courtroom at Comodoro Py, which seats 200 people and has modern technology. But that room is still undergoing renovations, and the judges have no offices there anyway, making it impractical for a trial that will require months of work.

The Human Rights Hall they are now requesting is a grand space, dark wood-paneled, with an imposing bench, stained glass behind the judges' chairs, desks for prosecutors and defense lawyers, a witness stand, and church-like pews on the main floor and in two upper galleries. It has hosted some of Argentina's most significant trials. Using it would allow the court to conduct the initial procedural motions and objections remotely while bringing the 87 defendants and all participants into the room for their interrogations—a hybrid approach the judges say they have used successfully in other cases without complaint until now.

Judge Castelli, in particular, mounted a defense of judicial independence that went beyond the practical grievances. He argued that changing the rules of the game mid-trial in response to public pressure, without substantive legal grounds, would appear arbitrary and would undermine both judicial autonomy and legal certainty. "Judges are not called to be popular, but to comply with the highest law," he said, and he publicly requested that when the Appeals Chamber meets with the court, the defense lawyers and prosecutors be included in the discussion. That request will not be granted; the higher court plans only to suggest measures to lighten the tribunal's workload.

The trial involves allegations of systematic bribery documented in notebooks kept by a former presidential aide. It is one of Argentina's most significant corruption cases in recent memory. The court's caseload is crushing—122 active cases, 39 ready for trial, three involving detained defendants—and the judges have been operating with inadequate resources from the start. Now they face the tension between the public and political demand for speed and their own institutional need for the time and space to do the work properly. The expanded schedule and the request for the historic courtroom represent a compromise, but one that comes with a clear message: the judges did not choose to be rushed, and they want everyone to know they asked for help first.