The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ratified the 16-year sentence imposed on Wilber Joel Palacio Blanco accused of financing terrorism.
Such a decision is contained in sentence number 647 written by Judge Elsa Gómez and validated by her courtroom colleagues, Carmen Marisela Castro and Maikel Moreno.
Palacio Blanco was arrested in El Valle, Caracas, after his membership in the criminal gang El Loro was detected, whose name derives from the nickname of its founder, Álvaro Enrique Montilla Briceño. Alias El Loro has been imprisoned in the Trujillo Judicial Confinement Center since June 28, 2008, for drug trafficking.
This subject has already served his sentence but refused to vacate the prison because from there he controlled a criminal structure dedicated especially to the distribution of drugs inside and outside of bars.
In addition to drugs, the subject and his group dabbled in cybercrimes after offering the sale of vehicles at very low prices from the Marketplace platform with the idea of scamming those interested. In fact, the mechanism was to summon potential buyers to certain sites to steal their money and flee without delivering any product. And if the victim resisted, they proceeded to take his life using firearms. Such situations were reported in the Aragua towns of Cagua and Magdaleno, among others.
This criminal structure controlled by Loro has cells in La Guaira, Miranda, Carabobo, Aragua, Trujillo and Caracas, according to investigations. Precisely in the Coche and El Valle parishes of Caracas, security agencies captured three members of a member cell of El Loro, including Palacio Blanco.
In the case of Palacio Blanco, he was sentenced to serve 16 years and two months in prison after admitting his participation in the events investigated by the 69th National Prosecutor’s Office with Anti-Extortion and Kidnapping Competence. That sentence was imposed on Palacio Blanco on April 1, 2022, in the 2nd Special Control Court with Jurisdiction in Cases Linked to Terrorism. The crimes for which he was convicted are financing of terrorism, criminal association and unnecessary accomplice in kidnapping and extortion.
The decision of the 2nd Special Court was appealed by the defendant’s lawyers, that is, Luis Alberto Pernalete Sánchez and Hugo Enrique Contreras Molina. In that appeal, the lawyers denounced that the conviction issued by the anti-terrorist court did not have the judge’s signature.
Chamber Two of the Court of Appeals rejected that approach and confirmed the conviction. Given this situation, the lawyers went to the Criminal Chamber of the TSJ with the same complaint. The magistrates analyzed the matter and rejected it because they considered that the alleged error was committed by the court of first instance, a situation that cannot be heard in the Criminal Court through this appeal.
In addition, the lawyers denounced that the anti-terrorist court allegedly forced Palacio Blanco to admit the facts.
In this regard, the magistrates clarified that the sentence on Palacio Blanco was imposed after having admitted his participation in the criminal acts investigated. And that being so, this sentence does not allow appeal through a cassation appeal such as the one presented by the subject’s defenders.
For this reason, they dismissed the appeal and left the sentence agreed upon against Palacio Blanco unscathed.
