The president of the Justice and Transparency Foundation, Trajano Vidal Potentini, criticized the fact that the State, through the Public Ministry, endangers the lives of witnesses who, as a fundamental piece to achieve convictions in their fight against corruption, without the country having a protection system for them.
He argued that the witness protection system must be contemplated in the Penal Code, but the initiative has been going around in the National Congress for more than 20 years, a situation that he considers as irresponsible of the legislators.
He said that despite the fact that the Criminal Code is fundamental for the elaboration of a criminal policy of the State and has focused national public opinion at different times, it has not yet been endorsed in the National Congress.
«What we are exposing, that it is an issue that we have to criticize, an irresponsibility of the legislators, of the State as such, that you are giving profuse use to what are the awarded denunciations, incorporating, putting witnesses without us having a basis, a protection mechanism such as the mandate of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption that we signed and that we have not had the responsibility that everyone who denounces corruption is under that protection, “he said.
He added that “what we are exposing people to danger with an issue that we must give priority to and we do not give it since the approval of the Penal Code, a transcendent code to cover the void of what is the criminal industry that today is It has been expanding without us having a way to respond either”
