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International News

The Background Investigator Goes To Argentina

January 01, 2011 posted by Steve Brownstein

In a continuing series, The Background Investigator, sends its attorneys or experts to various countries around the world to explore the justice systems and bring back to you their findings. This month Steven Brownstein visited Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here is his report:

Argentina has 3 levels of laws and resulting courts to enforce them.

There are the Federal, Provincial and Local levels.

There is only one Federal set of laws and courts and it takes precedence over all other levels.

The Federal law generally deals with disputes of the country, agencies, or between different provinces.

In addition, cases dealing with drugs, foreigners and companies are heard in the federal courts system.

The problem (especially for pre-employment screening companies) is that the jurisdiction of the Federal courts mirrors at times that of the local courts and their laws and jurisdiction so that a case may be heard by either the Federal or local court and there is no real guidance of how to know which court the case was sent to or ended up at.

The Courts follow a hierarchy of the lower or common court and Superior, or  the Supreme Court of Justice.

The Supreme Court of the federal system is the ultimate authority over all cases.

There are lower federal criminal courts through out the country as well.

The Criminal Forum as it's called has 2 parts.

First, the instructional phase of the process, this is like the indictment phase here in the US, a single judge decides if the case should proceed to trial in the Criminal Camara.

This phase (Criminal Camara)  is made up of 3 judges who sit over the trial and issue their decision of guilty or innocent.

The procees in the criminal courts moves quickly and there is minimal witness and evidence.

The Provincial criminal courts are set up the same as the Federal, except the prosecutor in the Provincial is independent of the judge in the first phase of the trial.

In the Federal, the prosecutor is more of an assistant to the judge, and at the Provincial the judge is more the director and the prosecutor is the investigator.

So the at the Province the judge or the prosecutor starts the ‘instruction’ and then they continue to trial in front of the tribunal, Camaras del Crimen (Criminal Court).

The decision can be appealed to the Provincial or Federal Supreme Court by the process called casacion or revocation.

Records are separate for each province.

Each province is autonomous and there is no record sharing.

The federal system is one system through out the country but the system is new and not sophisticated yet to have included all courts.

Therefore, if you were to be looking for a criminal record the first place would be the province the person was in.

Although the case may have gone to the Appellate or Supreme Court of the province, it would have started at the local court.

There are 23 provinces and most have only one court.

The larger cities, such as Buenos Aries, have many.