Argentina Removes Rosario Judge Gastón Salmain for Concealing Earlier Dismissal

Argentina’s seven-member judicial impeachment jury unanimously removed Gastón Alberto Salmain, the head of Federal Court No. 1 in Rosario, on October 29. It found misconduct in his concealment of earlier judicial employment and a 2002 dismissal by the Supreme Court when he sought judicial appointments. The decision ends his tenure as a federal judge. The jury found that Salmain had entered 33 judicial selection competitions between 2016 and 2024 without disclosing that employment, its termination or the disciplinary sanction. “The omission was conscious,” the jury said. His lawyers argued that the disclosure rules required him to declare only sanctions imposed within the previous ten years. The jury rejected that interpretation and treated the missing information as a deliberate omission rather than an administrative oversight. The panel rejected a separate removal charge concerning alleged bribery linked to the Attila trust’s access to dollars at the official exchange rate during currency restrictions. It declined to adopt the ongoing criminal investigation’s provisional conclusions as its own finding. That decision did not resolve the criminal case. The loss of judicial immunity allows an existing pretrial detention order to be executed, with house arrest authorized; the reports described detention as pending. Salmain’s defense lawyers, Yamil Castro Bianchi and José Manuel Ubeira, denied the accusations and challenged the evidence. The Council of the Magistracy’s official account of the October 14 closing arguments records that the prosecution sought his removal while the defense asked the jury to reject the charges. The jury then began deliberations. Salmain did not attend the October 29 reading of the verdict.