Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment removed Rosario federal judge Gastón Salmain on Thursday for hiding a 2002 firing from the courts on his job applications, and a court then ordered him held at home in a separate bribery case.

The jury, the seven-member panel that tries federal judges, ruled unanimously that Salmain’s conduct amounted to poor performance in office, grounds for removal. In 2002 he was dismissed by the Supreme Court from his job as a court employee after being accused of offering to pay a colleague to rig the draw that assigns cases; he was charged and completed a probation program. The jury found that he left the dismissal off his applications in more than 30 competitions for judgeships, although the rules required him to report it. “The omission was conscious,” the jury said, adding that the judge “decided, by his own criterion, what to declare and what to keep quiet.” Salmain’s lawyers argued he was not obliged to include it, because the rules then covered only the previous 10 years. He became a federal judge in Rosario in May 2023.

The jury did not remove him over a second charge, an alleged bribe, because that matter is the subject of a criminal case still under way, known as Attila, after a trust. It said its decision is not a ruling on whether an agreement existed or on his criminal responsibility. The Council of the Judiciary, which selects and disciplines federal judges, had suspended him in June and sent him to trial on both counts. In the criminal case he is formally charged with breach of duty, aggravated bribery and prevarication, meaning knowingly issuing a wrongful ruling. Prosecutors allege a US$200,000 bribe in exchange for an injunction that let the trust buy US$10 million at the official exchange rate while currency controls were in force. A businessman who testified as a cooperating defendant implicated him. Salmain’s defense calls that witness a liar and says it has not been shown that the two met.

With the removal, Salmain lost the immunity from arrest that judges hold. The same day, at the request of prosecutors, Federal Judge Carlos Vera Barros of Rosario ordered him detained in the Attila case. He is to serve the detention at a home in Buenos Aires city wearing an electronic ankle monitor, and the airport security police are to carry out the order. The criminal case continues.