The defense of fugitive former minister Juan Silva announced the possibility of taking advantage of effective collaboration during the week, for the case of the Tarata III Bridge, which cost the State around S/232 million, in the San Martín region.
His lawyer, Luis Alfredo Yalán, stated in a conversation with this newspaper that, although Silva’s delivery is imminent, the collaboration depends on the result dictated by the accounting-financial expertise on the aforementioned project and that it must come out within a maximum period of 20 days. . “If the result of the expert opinion shows that there were no irregularities, that everything was legal and the Bidding Committee has not failed, Mr. Silva would have to submit to effective collaboration because he would have committed a crime. But if it is shown that the tender was a fraud due to the Committee’s actions, he could not do it, ”he maintained.
The defense of the former Minister of Transportation alleges that there was an agreement between the members of the Bidding Committee for the work (made up of Edgar Vargas, Víctor Valdivia and Miguel Espinoza) and the OSCE. “The members of the Committee were in collusion from the expansion of the bases to the qualification of the offer,” he assured.
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However, the Prosecutor’s Office handles the hypothesis that both Silva and said members belonged to a criminal organization led by President Pedro Castillo to benefit businessmen and relatives from the Ministry of Transport and Communications, infiltrating Provías Nacional and Provías Descentralizado.
In this sense, effective collaboration depends on what the expert opinion provided by the Illicit Enrichment and Constitutional Complaints area of the Public Prosecutor’s Office yields. The first approach that Silva had through his defense with the Prosecutor’s Office was on July 27. There the lawyer spoke with the Supreme Deputy Prosecutor Marco Huamán Muñoz. “I told him that my client will turn to the law once the expertise comes out, it is a right that he has to get to the truth. If it is proven that he has been lying, he will submit to effective collaboration because he committed a crime”, he points out.
In accordance with what was stated by Silva’s lawyer, on May 27, he asked the then prosecutor of the Nation Pablo Sánchez to make an expert on the Tarata III project. “If he had agreed to do the expert examination, Mr. Juan Silva would have turned to law a long time ago. I am not saying that Mr. Silva is innocent or a little angel, but rather that the irregularities are proven, that the tender was born dead and my client could not commit a crime due to the actions of the Bidding Committee,” added Yalán, who announced that he would denounce Sánchez. for alleged cover-up.
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Juan Silva has been on the run since early June, when Supreme Judge Juan Checkley Soria authorized his preliminary arrest in the Puente Tarata case. Being a former high official, it is the Nation’s own prosecutor, Liz Benavides, who investigates him through the Illicit Enrichment and Constitutional Complaints area.
According to recent versions of Bruno Pacheco, who turned himself in to the Prosecutor’s Office on Saturday, July 23, he once observed Juan Silva “giving money” to President Castillo for the alleged favoring of certain companies in the award of works in the MTC.
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Keys to the case and future citations
In July, the Special Team of Prosecutors against Power brought together 7 cases linked to Pedro Castillo, including the Tarata III Bridge. It contains the effective collaborations of businessmen Karelim López and Zamir Villaverde. Juan Silva would have joined the criminal organization led by Castillo to make works in the MTC viable, indicates the prosecutor’s thesis.
This Monday, August 1 and Tuesday, August 2, they will declare at the headquarters of Av. Abancay members of the Tarata III Bridge Tender Committee and Karelim López. The latter will expand your statement.
