2024-05-08 03:53:06
The Amistad case advances. The Prosecutor’s Office showed the records of Bibian Hernández‘s travels with Rafael Correa‘s former advisor, Pamela Martínez, who cooperated in the Bribery case.
After several attempts and delays, finally, the hearing to formulate charges for the so-called Amistad case continued on Thursday, March 21, 2024. The Attorney General’s Office filed charges against three people and two companies for money laundering.
The protagonist of the case is Bibian Hernández, a lawyer from Guayaquil prosecuted for allegedly leading a criminal structure. As he had done in the first part of the hearing, prosecutor David Bermeo pointed out that Hernández used Luis Ortiz, Ericka Carvajal and the companies Asesoramiento Global Integral Abogados ABBHV and Global Strategy Law BHV to launder money that originated in illicit activities. like corruption.
When analyzing the accounts of Hernández, his partners and companies, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, USD 22.4 million were found moved. Of that amount, the group would not have justified USD 18.5 million.
The investigation was opened in July 2022. It was based on a report prepared by the Financial and Economic Analysis Unit (UAFE), which analyzed the unusual operations of Bibian Hernández and his two companies, between 2016 and 2021.
The travels of Bibian Hernández
During the hearing, the Prosecutor presented nearly 80 elements of conviction collected during the previous investigation. These elements will be the basis to continue with the investigation that will last 90 days in the tax investigation stage.
One of the elements that Bermeo dedicated the most time to is a letter dated July 4, 2023, sent by Tecnoviajes, a Guayaquil tourist agency. This company would have been in charge of some trips that Hernández made between 2016 and 2020, inside and outside the country.
For this reason, the Prosecutor’s Office requested the invoices that were paid by Bibian Hernández, Asesoramiento Global Integral Abogados ABBHV and Global Strategy Law BHV in those years.
The documentation records 13 trips abroad, one national and another whose destination was revealed by the Prosecutor’s Office at the hearing.
During his intervention at the hearing, Alfonso Zambrano Pasquel, Bibian Hernández’s lawyer, pointed out that, although the Prosecutor’s Office has reported that his client, “has traveled with different people.
“One can travel and greet many people and that does not make him responsible for the crime committed by a third party.”
The shadow of the Bribery case
According to the information presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, on those 15 trips – in addition to Bibian Hernández – there were 13 other passengers.
Pamela Martínez, former constitutional judge and former advisor to former President Rafael Correa, is the one who traveled the most with five trips. She is one of those sentenced for the 2012-2016 Bribery case.
In this process, the Prosecutor’s Office demonstrated the existence of a criminal structure that operated during the government of Rafael Correa. This group collected bribes from state contractors and used them to finance Alianza PAIS (AP) campaigns. For this reason, Correa, former vice president Jorge Glas and several of his trusted former ministers were sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery.
Pamela Martínez, together with her advisor Laura Terán, would have been in charge of accounting for the bribes, in an office parallel to the Presidency of the Republic. Martínez and Terán delivered the information about the bribes in the Bribery case to the Prosecutor’s Office and, in exchange, received reduced sentences.
So they distanced themselves from Correism. Terán also appears on a trip with Hernández. This is not the first time that Hernández has been mentioned in relation to the Bribery case.
According to information the Prosecutor’s Office has, she was part of Correa’s defense in that case. Although at that time she was not yet a lawyer. In the Amistad case, Hernández’s lawyer is Alfonso Zambrano Pasquel, who was also part of the defense of former President Correa in the Bribery case.
By: PRIMCIIAS