2023-09-21 01:46:19
Ivan Saquicela, current president of the Supreme Court of Ecuador, before hearing the file of the Bribery case against former president Rafael Correa, considered the actions of the first instance courts null and void, according to a leaked audio accessed by Página/12.
However, Saquicela, then a judge of a criminal chamber of the highest court, ruled against the former president when the case reached his court. Then, as a corollary of a historical line that is repeated in its dynamics throughout the entire continent, Saquicela was awarded the leadership of the highest court of justice of Ecuador.
The audio that was leaked
“Both the existence of the infraction and the alleged responsibility are very different from the initial accusation, which no longer exists, and therefore he should have asked to justify its elements and he does not do so,” said Saquicela, current president of the National Court of Justice. Ecuadorian justice, on June 21, 2019 when he was still a magistrate of the highest court. His objection pointed to the actions of Judge Daniela Camacho and prosecutor Diana Salazar in a case that ended in the eight-year prison sentence against former President Rafael Correa, a handful of his government officials and businessmen accused of bribery. .
Saquicela’s statement occurred two days after Camacho participated in the hearing on June 19, 2019, the result of which was the reformulation of charges and the ruling of preventive detention for Alexis Mera, Correa’s former legal secretary, and María de los Ángeles. Duarte, former Minister of Transportation and Public Works. “Let’s analyze. What does the writing say? Madam Judge, please issue the incarceration ticket for the preventive detention issued on June 19. What was June 19? The linking. What does Daniela (Camacho) answer? I did not issue preventive detention on the 19th. Very good. And if he didn’t dictate, why the hell is (Mera) in prison?” Saquicela reasons in an audio that Page/12 exclusively accessed.
In the exchange with the magistrate, he is told that “if he did not dictate, he had to release him immediately,” and Saquicela responds: “exactly, that’s all. So, why is she (Duarte) imprisoned?”
The process that Saquicela questioned was what was known as the “Bribes” case, redefined as “Bochornos” by the militants of Alianza País with the coordinates of Lawfare and reported by the Ecuadorian press as the “Arroz Verde” case, a typical dish of the region to which one of the coimeros would have appealed to title the subject of an email sent to an official involved. The investigation followed similar paths to those of Lava Jato in Brazil and the Cuadernos case in Argentina. So much so that there was evidence implanted through the writing of a notebook by one of the informers during her arrest, through receipts and apocryphal documents such as alleged proof of receipt of a payment to Mera, without any type of signature or rubric. Even the determination of responsibility attributed to Correa was conceived under the figure of “psychic influence”, in a supposed irradiation of the will to make others commit crimes.
In 2019, the State Attorney General’s Office opened a formal investigation into the “Arroz Verde” case and called it the “Bribes 2012-2016” case. In 2020, Salazar accused several public officials and former officials of Correa’s government of participating in the alleged corruption scheme, receiving payments to finance Correísmo’s electoral campaign in exchange for the granting of public works. In 2021 the trial began in the National Court of Justice.
The process was plagued by irregularities and tragicomedy steps, such as the preparation of witnesses in the Quito Police and the subsequent suspension of the hearing in which they would provide testimony, because said witnesses proved to be unreliable for the accusers. The hearing had been scheduled in record time because Correa’s political adversaries needed to sentence him before the deadlines for his electoral disqualification expired or, failing that, so that the news of his conviction would demoralize his followers and he could prevail in the elections. Guillermo Lasso elections.
The link with Argentina and the persecution against Vice President Cristina Kirchner is unavoidable, since this week the ruling of the local Supreme Court was known that supported the constitutionality of the Law of Repentance, in response to an appeal presented by the former Minister of Federal Planning , Julio De Vido. In Ecuador, the focus of attention was placed on José Conceição dos Santos, a former director of Odebretch in the tropical country who confessed in September 2019 that the construction company gave USD 2.6 million for the 2013 Alianza País presidential campaign and other USD 2.5 million for the 2014 regional elections. However, he was not even accused by the Prosecutor’s Office.
In the recording that was sent to this medium, Saquicela warned that Camacho accused him of a series of crimes, ranging from bribery and influence peddling to illicit association, but then he abandoned that line of argument and had to reformulate the statement. “So, the concussion disappeared and now I have three crimes, it is obvious that the elements of conviction for these three, both the existence of the infraction and the alleged responsibility, are very different from the initial accusation, which no longer exists,” stated the judge.
Almost two years later, Saquicela ratified what was done by the Judiciary. Despite the fact that the defense of the former Ecuadorian Head of State alleged that the judge whose audio is now coming to light, and his partners Marco Rodríguez and Iván León, president of the court after the convulsive dismissal of 16 magistrates at the initiative of the Judiciary Council , were not even drawn to rule on the case, the judges endorsed the sentence against Correa.
Condemn is the task
In this audio leaked by a person who was at the meeting with Judge Saquicela, the most serious thing the magistrate says is that the initial accusation is being changed for all the other crimes that he ends up being awarded later. This is what jurists call the principle of congruence. To put it simply: Correa and others were accused of one thing and convicted of another.
The recording shows the scandal, the willingness of certain judges to convict for anything, how the case was put together that Saquicela himself later validates. Constructing the fraudulent nature of these persecution processes with proscriptive purposes.
Criminal law specialists told Página/12 that this audio could represent a supervening event that gives rise to an appeal for review of the entire bribery case.
As a corollary to highlight and to be understood, in the best Sergio Moro style in Brazil, who ended up being Jair Bolsonaro’s minister, the Ecuadorian establishment awarded Saquicela with the presidency of the Court of his country on February 5, 2021.
Correa’s word
“We tried honestly. When we were government we carried out a judicial reform that was an example in the world. There are publications, reports. Unfortunately, we can change the infrastructure, the processes, but we cannot change the heart of the human being. So, at the first pressure, many judges sold out to the power in power.” This phrase was said by Correa in an interview for the La García program, on AM 750 on March 27, 2023.
Correa, like other presidents of the progressive era in Latin America, has been denouncing judicial persecution, the Lawfare network and proscription for years.
In that same program, on November 4, 2021, the regional leader made reference to the sentence in the so-called Bribery case, the most serious of the accusations against him. That spring morning in Buenos Aires, Correa was interviewed in person in the studios of AM 750. The mass infections of Covid were beginning to decrease, the vaccines were taking effect and we were returning to social life.
The interview was without a mask but still with the acrylic panels dividing the table and the radio microphones into cubicles.
There the former Ecuadorian president said: “I have more than 46 open cases. Every morning I get up to see what my latest cause is. But now, the most serious thing is that they involved me in a bribery case that never existed. They accused me of being the leader of a criminal organization. Since they had no evidence, they finally sentenced me as an instigator through psychic influence. That trial was held in the middle of the pandemic, when they had suspended all hearings except that one.
“And the last stage, in the cassation, they issued the ruling in 17 business days to have everything ready one or two days before September 18, 2020 when the candidacies were registered to prevent me from being a candidate and even prevent me from returning to the country.
“Because modesty aside, if I was in the country, even without being a candidate we won the election. They win by cheating. Lasso is a president who is the result of cheating.”
Correa was referring to the April 2021 ballot, where the champion of anti-Correismo candidate of the conservative CREO movement and ally of the Social Christian Party, Guillermo Lasso, won in the second round against his Correista rival Andres Arauz by more than 53 percent of the votes. .
The timeline that we are marking is not coincidental: the sentence against Correa for the Bribery case is from April 2020. In September of that same year, a court of cassation confirmed by majority the eight-year sentence for Correa and a group of collaborators. . Since then, Correa was banned and unable to return to his country.
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