June 15, 2023, 7:44 AM
June 15, 2023, 7:44 AM
The former employee of the Ministry of the Environment and Water, Claudia Cortez revealed, in her statement to the Prosecutor’s Office, that The executive secretary of a peasant social organization, affiliated with the government, received $10,000 from former minister Juan Santos Cruz. The ex-authority is in preventive detention accused of collecting bribes from companies for the award of public works.
In his testimony, Cortez recounted that she, along with former minister Juan Santos Cruz, went to the leader’s office member of the Unity Pact and they gave him $us 10,000 and Bs 30,000 in cash. This medium does not reveal the name of the leader because he could not find a counterpart, despite the fact that he insisted on contacting him.
In Cortez’s statement before the Prosecutor’s Office it reads: “The leader participated in the management of a contract and the visit is related to the payment corresponding to his part of the loot of the bribe received by the same”. The witness pointed out that she participated in at least 15 deliveries with this type of payment.
The information was provided by a source close to the Prosecutor’s investigation. This medium was able to know a part of the declaration of the former official who is being investigated as a co-author and who applied for the effective collaborator program after revealing that former minister Juan Santos, currently in jail, received bribes to award works.
In an eight-hour statement,
Claudia Cortez revealed that a criminal organization that goes beyond former Minister Cruz and that reaches current officials, ex-officials and individuals, it operated from that state department to get bribes from the companies that were hired.
However, both the Prosecutor’s Office and Abel Loma, Mrs. Cortez’s lawyer, agreed that due to an investigative strategy The names of the people involved will not be revealed. to protect the investigation.
However, Loma pointed out that the investigations are delayed. In fact, So far, the inspection of the controversial office on the 18th floor of the Casa Grande del Pueblo has not been carried outwhich was supposedly used as “operations headquarters” for the collection of bribes.
“The commission of prosecutors must get to work urgently. We do not want to appeal again in the absence of evidence and that in a while the former minister Santos Cruz is released from prison, free with a resolution of dismissal as innocent and that Claudia Cortez was crazy, “he said.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, asserted that in a period of less than six months an accusation may be reached within the investigation in this case because of how advanced it is.
“I do not think we will take the six months of the criminal procedure, but rather in less time, because most of the evidence is being identified and collected to substantiate an accusation”, he stated in a meeting with the media.
Lima maintained that The witness referred to the bank transfers that were made and a series of elements that must be evaluated and corroborated by the Prosecutor’s Office for the development of the investigation where the former Minister of Environment and Water, Juan Santos Cruz, is the main person involved.
“(Claudia Cortez) is making an effective cooperation request and is also requesting to be a protected witnessThese determinations are judicial and fiscal and are under evaluation, a determination has not yet been made, “he added, according to the Erbol Network report.
Lawyer Loma denounced that his client was threatened last week by an unknown who with a cap and chinstrap approached her on Avenida Arce, in La Paz, and threatened her with death.
This medium reminded him of the case of the protected witness of the case for the alleged bribe of $us 9 million in the Bolivian Highway Administration (ABC) supposedly paid by the Chinese company Chec for the award of the Sucre-Yamparáez double track. This person appeared dead in a hotel in Miami, United States.
Also on the case of the controller of Banco Fassil, Carlos Alberto Colodro, who allegedly committed suicide despite information circulating that he had discovered something very serious and the investigation leads to the possibility that he was assassinated.
Loma assured that her defendant fears for her life. “We do not trust justice. On Wednesday, at approximately 9:00 p.m., near the Sopocachi Multicine, Arce Avenue, a man with a thick build and dark clothes approached him threateningly and told him not to declarethat he does not provide more information, because his life is in danger.
The defense regretted that security camera images of the area could not be obtained, and that the vehicle into which this person got into is in the process of being identified. She went into a state of shock, she doesn’t want to go out or go anywhere alone. Since we do not have the possibility of hiring personal security and the requests to provide security by the Government, the Police or the Prosecutor’s Office were not met, it is that her son and her nephew do not move from her side to take care of her ” she stated.
A group of parliamentarians from the “evista” wing denounced this Wednesday that they suffer intimidation and harassment from the Government, for which they announced actions at the international level and launched the slogan “I don’t want to commit suicide”.
Deputy Anyelo Céspedes said that he receives intimidation calls and what vehicles go around your home. In addition, he accused the Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, of planning criminal charges against him.
He pointed out that his colleague Ramiro Venegas is going through a similar situation, he even already has proceedings against him. “That’s why our slogan is ‘I don’t want to commit suicide.’
“We are seeing how they are committing suicide, how they are killing protected witnesses and we are going to go to the international community because in Bolivia there is no law or justice that protects us,” said the deputy.
According to Cespedes, these intimidations arise from the acts of corruption that he has denounced in the Governmenteither. He said that the parliamentarians will go to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
