After three weeks of deliberation, judges call to announce whether or not they accept the challenge raised by Jorge Yunda

Almost three weeks after the criminal judges of Pichincha Wilson Lema and Patlova Guerra suspended the hearing to analyze the arguments heard in the request for disqualification made by the dismissed mayor of Quito Jorge Yunda against the provincial judge Fabián Fabara, the magistrates summon the parties for next December 22 to announce the resolution they have reached.

The hearing was suspended on December 1, after almost five hours of hearing in which the arguments of Yunda and Fabara’s defenses were heard. Judges Lema y Guerra initially they said it would take them 40 minutes to solve, but given the extensive content of audios exposed by Yunda’s defense, they unanimously decided to suspend the hearing to take the time necessary to deliberate and issue a response to the lawsuit.

Jorge Yunda recuses one of the judges of the Trial Court of the case for embezzlement and asks that he be separated from the case

Lema and Guerra are the skillful members of the Trial Court that handles the embezzlement case that it analyzes the acquisition of 100,000 tests to detect Covid-19 by the Secretary of Health of the Municipality of Quito. Fabián Fabara was the only judge of the Court against whom Yunda filed the challenge.

In this embezzlement, the former mayor Yunda is investigated, as a mediate author; former Secretary of Health Lenin Mantilla and Juan Alejandro Vinelli, manager of Salumed SA, accused as direct authors; and eleven more people named as co-authors, among them, Ximena Abarca, former Secretary of Health; o Linda Guamán, former technical coordinator of the Ministry of Health.

Édgar Molina, part of Yunda’s defense, hopes that the judges Lema Y Guerra will give way to the request that they were assured that at the hearing they presented about 115 minutes of audio to show that the judge “Interrogated, cross-examined, led witnesses, discredited, He asked more than 90 questions and the most illogical is that it contravened express law, because the Code says that it cannot be clarified before a defendant, but that the judge can request clarifications from witnesses and experts ”.

According to him, in the audio presented as evidence it is heard when Judge Fabián Fabara “He questioned and asked Jorge Yunda for clarification.” Molina stressed that during the hearing Due to the demand, Fabara did not want to be questioned or testify.

The lawyers of the former capital mayor affirmed that in a hearing they proved that there was a lack of impartiality on Fabara’s part. If the demand is accepted, according to Marcelo Icaza, Another of Yunda’s defenders, judges Lema and Guerra should also decide if they separate from the case because they are already “contaminated” or if they continue to be part of the Trial Court.

Challenge presented by Jorge Yunda in embezzlement case causes the trial process to suffer delays

That they have made it clear that there are no legal or factual arguments to separate the provincial judge he is defending from jurisdiction, said Xavier Flores, Fabara’s lawyer. He does not believe that the demand prosper because it proved at the hearing the errors of the claim, the violation of the requirements and questioned how Yunda’s defense obtained the audios of the hearing, because, he said, there is a literal transcription of parts, of up to ten minutes, of things said in the trial hearing.

“The only way to make the transcription is to have the audios previously and the audios the plaintiff just obtained before the challenge hearing. There is no logical possibility that If the stage was not recorded on the outside, there is no way to transcribe. No one is in the capacity memorize ten minutes of dialogue exchange and have the same words at the end, “said Flores.

From 16:30 on Wednesday, December 22, next Lema and Guerra will announce the oral resolution they reached. The diligence will be reinstated in a room of the Provincial Court of Pichincha.

If the challenge claim is declared valid, Judge Fabara will lose jurisdiction in the case and will have to draw another judge to replace him. At that point you must also determine whether the audience The trial for the crime of embezzlement returns to zero with a single new judge or the entire Court is changed.

Instead of the challenge being rejected, Fabara will continue to hear the case and the hearing will resume from the day it was suspended, that is, on the 16th. Regardless of the resolution adopted on the challenge, the processing of the cause would be resumed in 2022. (I)