The preliminary hearing of Patricia Samudio, former Petropar head, was suspended again. On Wednesday night, his lawyers Alfredo Enrique Kronawetter and Federico Huttemann resigned their positions. With this, the process is delayed again.
Samudio appeared in the same way, yesterday before Judge Julián López. But, in the absence of defense attorneys, she signed the appearance record with her husband José Costa Perdomo and left the scene.
It should be remembered that in addition to Samudio, José Costa Perdomo (husband), Félix Chávez, Roberto Cabrera, Darío Cáceres and Freddy Careaga (the last four are former Petropar officials), are also charged.
They are accused of money laundering derived from the irregular purchase of thousands of bottles of tonic water and other supplies during the health emergency. The property damage caused by this is G. 359,700,000.
With what happened there are three chicanes starring Samudio.
Julián López will have to define if this year the case will continue or if it happens next year. What the magistrate had to decide on the date was whether the case was raised to an oral trial or not.
OTHER IMPUTED
Judge Julián López granted the conditional suspension of the procedure for the four co-defendants together with the former head of Petropar. They will donate an ambulance for the Roque González firefighters in 15 days with other conditions.
The jail sentence was not very high for the officials since they participated in the case only as accomplices. So the delivery of the ambulance was enough for them to benefit from a procedural exit.
CONTEXT
To understand the accusation it is necessary to explain the context. On April 16 of last year, a group of deputies from the multibank filed a complaint about an irregular Petropar tender (ID 361210).
It consisted of the purchase of 3,000 units of N95 masks at G. 38 thousand each (its ceiling price is G. 25 thousand). And the purchase of 5000 bottles of tonic water at G. 5000 each. Thus totaling G. 114 million for N95 masks. And G. 25 million for the bottles of tonic waters.
This led to the fact that, almost a week later, on April 22, the head of the state oil company resigned from her position due to overbilling.
But the case did not end there. Last June, in addition to detecting over-invoicing, the absence of these goods was also detected in the entity’s assets in consideration of the amount paid.
What happened was the following, Patricia Samudio’s husband; José Costa Perdomo, previously agreed with the supplier Solumedic the fraudulent tender. The company would only supply the onesies at over-billed prices. But not the rest of the items. The rest was simulated.
The total of the tender was G. 359 million. This money was transferred to the account of the Solumedic company that it has in the Itaú bank as payment for the supplies. Immediately, authorities of said firm in turn transferred these resources to the account that the company Racole SA has authorized in the Interfisa bank. Perdomo had a debt with this firm and he with Samudio sought to cover it with state funds.
