Overview
- The federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano asked the court to call 34 people to indagatoria for receiving COVID-19 vaccines outside priority rules, a list that includes Eduardo and Hilda “Chiche” Duhalde and journalist Horacio Verbitsky.
- Taiano frames the recipients as 'partícipes necesarios' of peculado, the misappropriation of public goods, a crime that carries two to ten years in prison under Argentine law.
- The indictment request reconstructs three linked episodes of irregular vaccination: a makeshift Ministry vaccinating allies on 18 February 2021, a five-dose home visit to Duhalde on 1 February 2021, and 36 irregular applications at Hospital Posadas between December 2020 and February 2021.
- The filing cites documentary records such as NOMIVAC entries and RENAPER data, notes four deceased listed beneficiaries for whom prosecutors seek extinction of action by death, and says hospital staff testimony corroborates the scheme.
- The move follows the Cámara Federal’s 2024 order to expand the probe beyond officials and comes after officials have already been processed and sent toward trial which could now be followed by interrogations of private recipients if Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti agrees to Taiano’s request.