February 27, 2023, 22:24 PM
February 27, 2023, 22:24 PM
Sandra Velarde Casal, former municipal secretary of Administration and Finance of the Mayor’s Office of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, of the management of Angélica Sosa, pleaded guilty to breach of dutywhich he would have committed during the execution of the bus rapid transit system (BRT) and requested a sentence of three years in prison.
Velarde was the last accused in the BRT case, since she was only charged in the first week of November 2022, through an extension to the process that the Prosecutor’s Office presented to the First Anti-Corruption Court of the Santa Cruz capital.
In the defendant’s memorial, to which EL DEBER had access, which was presented by her lawyers: Fátima Zambrana and Fernanda Orellana, to the prosecutor Alexander Mendoza, pleads guilty only to the crime of breach of duty, which has a penalty of 1 to 4 years in prison.
However, in the process initiated by the Prosecutor’s Office for the execution of the BRT project there are also the alleged crimes of uneconomic conduct and improper use of influences. In this case there are also 10 other defendants, including former mayor Angélica Sosa.
Velarde requests a sentence of three years in prison to be served in Palmasola, for one of the three crimes in the BRT case. This proposal for an abbreviated procedure, in which she refuses to go to an oral trial, was signed by the defendant on February 13 at the Kamiya clinic, where She has been hospitalized since December 8, 2022.
Now the Prosecutor’s Office is expected to accept or reject this request of one of the defendants. If it proceeds, a date and time must be set to hold Sandra Velarde’s hearing, as was done on December 22 of last year, when was sentenced to three years in prison for the crimes of breach of duty and uneconomic conductof which he pleaded guilty in the case called “irregular contracts”which had an affectation of Bs 25.6 million to the Mayor’s Office.
The other defendants in the BRT case are: Percy Fernández (former mayor), Angélica Sosa (former president of the Municipal Council and former interim mayor), Lucy Mariel López Quiroga (former director of Transportation and Roads), Rubén Darío Rivero Gallardo (former head of the Department of Public Transport Management Procedures and Authorizations), Emilse Sengler Fernández (former head of the SEMURB Administrative Department), Jorge Humberto Ortiz Bruno (former head of the Urban Public Transport Planning and Statistics Department), Rolando Pedro Rivera Correa (former Municipal Secretary of Urban Mobility), Nancy Roca Martínez ( Professional “A’ Lawyer), Jorge Luis Égüez Rivero (Professional “A” Lawyer) and Percy Rojas Limón, president of the Chuturubí company for lines 17 and 18, which was awarded the BRT concession contract.
