June 12, 2023, 10:50 PM
June 12, 2023, 10:50 PM
From 08:30 the key witness of the ‘bribery’ case in the Ministry of the Environment, he will appear before the commission of prosecutors that is investigating the case and in it he will make known the participation, in the clan, of a deputy minister and officials of that office, informed his lawyer Abel Loma, who said that Your client arrives in fear at this audience due to the multiple threats you received.
“Claudia (Cortez) has stated that a deputy minister would be involved, surely when declaring tomorrow (Tuesday) he will give some detailbut there is talk of coordinators, general directors who would be involved”, said the defense lawyer.
On June 1, the La Paz Prosecutor’s Office alerted about an alleged “disappearance” of Claudia Cortez and the departmental prosecutor, William Alave, said that a declaration of default of the main witness of the irregular acts would be processed in the Ministry of Environment in the period 2020-2023. The complainant’s lawyer appreciated the following day and said that prosecutors searched for their client in Santa Cruz, when she gave her address information in La Pazthen the Public Ministry decided to download the edict that it had published from the system.
Nevertheless, Cortez already gave an informative statement to prosecutors on May 16, same in which he delivered all the details that he also provided to the Ministry of Justice in February of this year. Despite this background, prosecutors charged Cortez and now she must attend as a syndicate for this case of legitimation of illicit profits.
The lawyer also said that she has the names of the businessmen who came to receive contracts and therefore should be investigated. The lawyer considers that after that statement his client will be apprehended because these days there was a lot of intimidation through phone calls and through relatives.
Despite the fact that the complaint is for the collection of bribes in at least seven million-dollar contracts for the award of works, the Prosecutor’s Office only has three people arrested: former minister Juan Santos Cruz; his nephew, Jhonny Alexander Santos Sánchez; and the former right hand, Rosa Viviana Bautista.
In addition, the lawyer questioned the controls that there are in supposedly monitored places, such as airplanes and the Casa Grande del Pueblo, where former Minister Santos had his office. The attorney said that her client reported that she On one occasion he brought Bs 300,000 to the office of Juan Santos Cruz.
That money had to bring from Tarija, He had no controls on the plane, the airline he used was BoA; but there was also no control over the income of the Casa Grande del Pueblowhere every visitor is checked when they enter, Loma does not explain how he passed those controls.
“It is not understood how it is possible that, for example, 300,000 Bolivians enter the ministry in the Casa Grande del Pueblo, there is no control at the door; at airports, the theme that is in vogue for Boliviana de Aviación. This money that Claudia would have gone to collect from Tarija was 300,000 bolivianos, which she had brought through Boliviana de Aviación, ”said the lawyer.
