Six police officials reported that lawyer Tulio Barrera, who is part of Edmundo González’s team, continually extorts them.
The uniformed officers, who are assigned to the Police Coordination Center No. 6 San Francisco Este (Zulia), made the complaint in a document submitted to the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of Zulia.
There they narrate that everything began with a procedure that they practiced on October 18 on Troncal del Caribe 6, La Paila Negra sector, via El Moján, border of the Mara municipality with Colombia.
At that site, officials detained Eduardo Emiro Labrador, a former member of the Legislative Council of Zulia, who has an open criminal case and was preparing to flee Venezuela and settle in the United States.
At the time of being arrested, police officers seized a cell phone and a laptop. Subsequently, the detainee was handed over to a commission from the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (Dgcim) that transferred him to Caracas.
Once this procedure was completed, lawyer Tulio Barrera appeared at the headquarters of the San Francisco Este Police Coordination Center, who said he represented the detained former legislator. Barrera demanded that the officials hand over his client’s laptop and cell phone. He argued that “he needed that evidence because apparently he was seriously involved in conspiratorial acts,” the complaining officials say in the document.
Apparently, the former Labrador legislator had created a WhatsApp group with people who were allegedly planning acts of violence on dates close to January 10, the day scheduled for the inauguration of reelected president Nicolás Maduro.
As a result, Labrador’s lawyer offered the police a large sum in dollars to hand over his alleged client’s laptop and cell phone. When the officials refused, the lawyer told them to face the consequences because he had contacts in the Prosecutor’s Office and was going to put them in prison.
Indeed, on October 29, lawyer Tulio Barrera sent a message via WhatsApp to one of the police officials where he stated “that we were not sending emissaries to speak with the superior prosecutor and that he was already in Caracas, and that if he did not “We gave 40 thousand dollars, he was going to send us to issue the arrest warrant by Prosecutor’s Office 26 of the Public Ministry since he had denounced us,” the letter says.
When narrating all the events, the police requested to open an investigation for the alleged commission of the crime of extortion. They also asked the Zulia Superior Prosecutor’s Office to order an investigation into the phone number of officer Fidel Villalobos, in order to record the messages that the lawyer Tulio Barrera sent him where he asked for the 40 thousand dollars.
