The First Criminal Cases Liquidator Court granted a six-month extension to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office to complete the investigation that follows the former deputy of Cambio Democrático Mario Miller and five other people for the alleged commission of the crime of embezzlement to the detriment of the National Assembly.
The investigations of the Public Ministry –which also include Eréndira González, Edith Navarro, Maricela Araúz, Isabel Araúz and Ismael Frías– arose as a result of an investigation by this medium, which revealed that deputies of the Assembly used the forms of that entity to presumably defraud the State: supposedly they issued checks, sent them to collect, paid a part to the “beneficiaries” and kept the rest.
According to an investigation by the newspaper La Prensa, the deputies received funds to channel them into aid to the community, but they never reached them.
One of the examples that best describes the manner in which the fraud was allegedly perpetrated is based on the testimony of Ana Grajales de Aris, a resident of Viejo Veranillo and who worked in the Assembly as a courier assistant. According to documents from the Comptroller General of the Republic, Grajales de Aris was endorsed a check for 1,800 dollars in November 2015, but she assured that she did not collect it. “The boss [el diputado] Mario Miller was going to get subsidies for a lot of people. He put me in, but I never charged anything… he told us that we had to change residence and [inscribirnos] in Democratic Change”, he told this medium at the time.
In 2018, the then comptroller Federico Humbert denounced several deputies for this practice before the Supreme Court of Justice, but these processes never prospered.
