Twenty years ago, the 41st Control Court of Caracas ordered a trial against María Corina Machado, accused of conspiracy, according to judicial sources. The aforementioned case was handed over to the 28th Trial Court of Caracas, where allegedly no hearing has been held to debate Machado’s guilt or innocence.
The criminal proceedings against Machado began in March 2004, when there was talk in Venezuela of activating a recall referendum against the then president Hugo Chávez. Leaders of the Chavista movement detected that Machado would use the electoral event to attack the State. For this reason, they filed two complaints against Machado before the Public Prosecutor’s Office, through documents signed by Carlos Delgado, Beatriz Rodríguez, Ramón Márquez, Ismael García, Francisco Ameliach, William Lara, Rodolfo Sanz, Olga Azuaje and Oscar Figuera.
The investigation was assigned to the then sixth national prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz, who collected documents establishing a link between the civil association Súmate, led by María Corina Machado, and US entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The Public Prosecutor’s Office collected the contract between the NED and Súmate to finance educational sessions for voters, signed with the number 2003-548.0. But at that time Súmate was in charge of collecting signatures for the recall of Chávez.
In the process of collecting signatures, submitted to the National Electoral Council (CNE), the electoral body detected 876,017 irregular signatures, which were the same handwriting as what the press called “flat signatures.” The Electoral Chamber of that time intervened and ordered the CNE to accept the 876,017 flat signatures as valid, according to ruling number 24 issued on March 15, 2005. The aforementioned ruling was drafted by the president of the Chamber, Alberto Martini Urdaneta, and supported by his colleagues Orlando Gravina and Rafael Hernández Uzcátegui.
Regardless of these incidents, the Public Prosecutor’s Office moved forward with the criminal proceedings against Machado and requested that the director of Súmate be tried for the crime of conspiracy “to destroy the republican signature that the nation has given itself.” This proposal was accepted by Judge Norma Sandoval, who ordered that the directors of Súmate be tried, but at liberty, in accordance with a decision of the Supreme Court of Justice. In addition to Machado, Alejandro Plas and Luis Enrique Palacios were also being prosecuted.
The case was referred to the 7th Trial Court of Caracas under the direction of Elías Álvarez, who called for three hearings which never took place: December 6, 2004, January 24, and February 7, 2005.
Between 2010 and 2011, the trial attempted to be started in the 28th Trial Court of Caracas, but the president of the Caracas Judicial Circuit at the time, Zinnia Briceño, verbally ordered that it be “put to sleep.” Currently, the 28th Trial Court of Caracas, where the Súmate case is filed, is in charge of Judge Jackson Blanco. Until now, it has not been known whether Blanco has called for the hearing to start the aforementioned trial, which was ordered 20 years ago, according to judicial sources.
