Santo Domingo.- Court attorney Mirna Ortiz said today that the restart of the hearing in the judicial process for fraud in the National Lottery, which had to start again due to health issues of one of the members of the court, in nothing affect the prosecution Public ministry.
He said that what has happened with the Operation 13 process is that immediacy was lost. “What is immediacy? The immediacy is nothing more than the continuity that the process must have so that the judges have fresh in their memory what has happened during the development of the hearing, ”she specified.
“When the suspensions that we were dealing with due to health issues of one of the members of the court exceeded ten days, a new conformation became necessary and that led to the fact that we had to start the case again,” he told journalists who cover the process and that they approached her when she was leaving the court.
The representative of Public ministry He assured that this in no way affects the accusation or his strategy either. “It is only to proceed as we have done, to start reading the accusation, an accusation that was already read today, a large part of the defendants have already established their statements and on Wednesday we continue with the presentation of the evidence,” he said.
Ortiz highlighted: “we are always ready to show our faces and face the processes. It does not represent any grievance either, since what the Public Ministry has to do is redeploy its strategy as if it had not been done before, ”he said in relation to the time the process took.
In his statements to the press, Ortiz explained: “that the judges cannot take into account what already happened prior to the restart of the hearing and what we are going to do is start over, and that is all.”
Due to the health problem of one of the judges, the Second Collegiate Court of the National District decided to restart the trial that follows the accused in the process called Operation 13.
The decision was announced by the president of the court, magistrate Claribel Nivar.
In addition to Claribel Nivar, judges Yissel Soto and Katherine Rubio now make up the plenary session of the court, who know the file presented by the Public Ministry against those accused of perpetrating fraud with an amount that amounts to more than 500 million pesos, through of the fraudulent draw, in which skittle number 13 was shown as the winner.
THEY WILL PRESENT EVIDENCE ON WEDNESDAY
The audience It was postponed to next Wednesday, February 15, starting at 9:00 in the morning.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office stressed that on that date the evidence will begin to be presented in the trial that is being heard in the Second Collegiate Court of the National District against those accused of the fraudulent pool draw, held on May 1, 2021 to the detriment of the National Lottery and betting banks.
The process continues against the former general administrator of the National Lottery Luis Maisichell Dicent, the main defendant in the prosecution of the Public Ministry.
Also, against co-defendants William Rosario Ortiz, Eladio Batista, Valentina Rosario Cruz, Jonathan Brea, Carlos Berigüete, Felipe Santiago Toribio, Edison Manuel Perdomo Peralta, Miguel Mejía and Rafael Mesa.
Also linked to this case is the fugitive Leónidas Medina Arvelo (Nazareth), who was declared in absentia at the request of the Public Ministry.
At this hearing, the Public Ministry was represented by court attorney Mirna Ortiz, Litigation Coordinator of the Specialized Attorney for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca); Yudelka Holguín Liz, Alexis Piña, Miguel Crucey and Andrés Mena.
