11 34. In the brief containing its final arguments, the State supplied a copy of Law No. 23,898 and tables on the fees of domestic court proceedings in Argentina, involving a total of 3 documents. * * * B) TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE 35. At the public hearing held on June 21, 2002, the Court received the statements of the witnesses offered by the Inter-American Commission. Those statements are summarized below, in the order in which they were given: a) Statement by José María Cantos Mr. Cantos filed his complaint with the Supreme Court only after bringing claims in the administrative-law courts. He did so expecting to receive some redress, moral compensation above all, for the damages he sustained in the seventies when, he alleged, State agents persecuted his family and property. He litigated personally for 10 years. He personally prepared almost everything presented to the Supreme Court. Attorneys simply signed the papers, having agreed to lend him the use of their signature, as he did not have the funds to pay the costs of legal counsel to handle the trial. Most of his briefs were rejected as improper or false. He pointed out that the amount of relief being sought in the claim was established through a procedure done with the Treasury Solicitor’s Office. The sum it established was so illusory that he decided to donate any Court-awarded damages to his province. He asked to settle accounts at the end of the case with the Supreme Court. When he did not win his case in the Supreme Court, Mr. Cantos decided to seek legal counsel to turn to international jurisdiction and thus filed with the inter-American system. b) attorney Statement by María Dolores Retondo de Spaini, Mr. Cantos’ The witness met Mr. Cantos in 1977, at a time when the “atmosphere in Santiago del Estero [was one of] political oppression and personal oppression.” She was legal counsel to Radiodifusora de Santiago del Estero, whose majority shareholder was Mr. Cantos. She learned of the criminal case brought against Mr. Cantos for allegedly forging the 1982 agreement. The charges were being brought by the Santiago del Estero prosecutor’s office, which believed that the signature on the agreement was false. She said that she learned from the presiding judge in the case that the only side to produce evidence in that case was Mr. Cantos and that he was acquitted because the forgery was not proved; instead, experts brought by Mr. Cantos showed that the signatures on the agreement were genuine. On appeal, the ruling was reviewed by the Federal Court and vacated on the grounds that the prosecutor who tried the case