The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice annulled a ruling that favored Oscar Rafael Aponte Landaeta, who served as president of Aceites y Solventes Venezolanos (Vassa), a company attached to Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa).
This decision of the Criminal Chamber is reflected in sentence 670, written by Judge Maikel Moreno and supported by his colleagues Carmen Marisela Castro and Elsa Gómez.
The events for which Aponte Landaeta is criminally prosecuted occurred in 2020 when he presided over the Vassa company, located in Guacara (Carabobo). According to what was reported by PDVSA at the time, the aforementioned manager was dedicated to “diverting strategic material such as lubricants, greases and sulfonic acid to other states of the country to later be smuggled abroad.” These criminal actions were committed through the manipulation of the state company’s computer systems.
“Similarly, the fraudulent contracting of a company for the acquisition of goods and supplies, the charging of commissions for overpricing in the contracting of transportation services and the irregular use of the company’s facilities for its own and third-party commercial purposes were confirmed. ”, PDVSA explained at the time, a situation that is also described in the ruling of the Criminal Chamber of the TSJ.
Due to these events, Aponte Landaeta was arrested on March 3, 2020. The following month, specifically on April 20, 2020, the Public Ministry requested to open a trial against the PDVSA manager for the alleged commission of the crimes of fraudulent embezzlement. own, own corruption, influence peddling, collusion and concert of official with contractors. This is read in the accusation document presented before the 2nd Control Court with Competence in Economic Illicits of the state of Carabobo, by prosecutors José Rivero Otamendi, Mariend del Carmen Palencia León and Lilibeth Ibáñez Osorio.
Eight months later, that is, on December 4, 2020, the aforementioned court partially accepted what was proposed by the Public Ministry and consequently ordered a trial against Aponte Landaeta for three of the five crimes originally charged: embezzlement, corruption and drug trafficking. influences. The court ruled out collusion, conspiracy between an official and a contractor and evasion of bidding processes. This last crime was not charged to the subject at first, being incorporated by the prosecutors at the time of requesting the trial.
The trial against Aponte Landaeta took place between March 7 and August 19, 2022. Finally, the 6th Trial Court acquitted the subject of all the crimes charged.
That decision that favored Aponte Landaeta was appealed by prosecutors Jhoanna Vanessa Borrego Ramírez, Luis Alfredo Padrino Bruzual and Marilyn Jackeline Hernández. But the Court of Appeals of Carabobo declared said appeal inadmissible and confirmed the sentence that acquitted the former president of Vassa.
Serious violations
That appeal reached the Criminal Court on May 2. The magistrates reviewed the file ex officio and confirmed “the violation of principles and procedural guarantees of public order, inherent to effective judicial protection and the right to defense”, which entails the absolute nullity of the actions carried out.
A first point made by the magistrates is the decision of the Second Control Court of Carabobo to dismiss Aponte Landaeta of the crimes of conspiracy as an official with a contractor and conspiracy. In this sense, the magistrates indicated that this Carabobo court “subverted public order by failing to comply with its duty to guarantee due process, constitutional principles that imply, among other things, the duty to consistently motivate the decisions issued.” For the magistrates, the infraction committed by the aforementioned court lies in the fact that it did not explain the reasons that led it to favor the former PDVSA manager by acquitting him of the aforementioned crimes. That is what in law is called motivation.
“The correct motivation for a ruling lies in expressing in argumentative form the reason and the legal and coherent logic by virtue of which the judge adopts a certain resolution, his decision is an act that arises from the study and evaluation of all the circumstances of the case. controversial”, the magistrates clarify.
“Consequently, said actions of the control judge incur the vice of lack of motivation by not expressing in a clear and precise manner the factual and legal bases for which the ruling was adopted, contravening principles and procedural guarantees of public order,” The magistrates emphasized, adding that “the trial judge incurs the same situation when he acquits the accused of the crimes for which the control judge ordered the trial.”
In light of these reasoning, the Criminal Chamber annulled what they consider the origin of all these problems, that is, the preliminary hearing on December 4, 2020, held in the 2nd Control Court with Competence in Economic Illicits of Carabobo. With this, the trial ordered by the aforementioned instance and its results, that is, the acquittal, were also annulled.
The call of the magistrates
As a result of the magistrates’ decision, they ordered that the file related to Aponte Landaeta be assigned to another Carabobo court to hold a new preliminary hearing where it will be decided whether or not to order a new trial against the former PDVSA manager accused of corruption, among others.
In addition, the Criminal Chamber urged judges to be more careful in the matters submitted to them, “in order to avoid actions such as those warned here that affect effective judicial protection, due process and the right to defense”.
Recently, the Criminal Court ordered an investigation into three Carabobo judges who favored a fraudster.
