Betssy Chávez did not appear at the hearing and is one step away from being declared a convicted criminal

Betssy Chávez was once again absent without any justification from this Friday’s hearing of the oral trial for the coup d’état of December 2022, despite the fact that the Special Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court warned a day before that, if Pedro Castillo’s former premier did not appear in the next session, she would be declared a contumacious offender.

President of the Republic pointed out that searches in prisons have shown to reduce the cell phone signal around and inside penitentiary establishments.

This, however, did not happen. The lawyer of the former head of the Council of Ministers once again requested that his client be excused, who, he said, had not communicated with her and presumed continued to be in poor health, which was accepted by the Prosecutor’s Office and the criminal court.

At the hearing last Thursday, to which Chávez did not attend or connect virtually, the lawyer told the judges that he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the former congresswoman, who already has three consecutive unjustified absences.

Already on Tuesday, Raúl Noblecilla, one of the former Castilian prime minister’s lawyers, was suspended for two months from professional practice and excluded from six hearings after it was detected that he presented allegedly false medical documentation to justify the absence of his client.

Days ago, Noblecilla presented a medical report attributed to the Chorrillos clinic, which detailed alleged health complications for Chávez.

However, when requesting verification, the court received a forceful response: the clinic, through its general manager Víctor Grández, denied having treated the former Chief of Staff on October 20 and specified that the alleged doctor who signed the report has not worked there for years. He also warned that the recipe books and stamps used did not correspond to their official models.

Given the evidence, the referee concluded that the lawyer engaged in negligent conduct, intended to hinder the development of the trial, violating ethical principles of the profession such as probity and procedural good faith. The court’s decision states that the lawyer violated the duties of the Organic Law of the Judiciary.

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