For the crime of embezzlement, the provincial prosecutor of Pichincha, Alberto Santillán, accuses 14 people as mediate perpetrators, direct authors and accomplices.
The defense of the former mayor of Quito Jorge Yunda completes the information required by the provincial judges Wilson Lema and Patlova Guerra within the claim for recusal raised against the third member of the Trial Court that analyzes the crime of embezzlement, Fabián Fabara; What remains is that the parties be notified with the date on which the respective hearing will be held.
Last Friday, judges Lema and Guerra, who must analyze the challenge raised against Fabara, gave a three-day deadline for Yunda’s defense to complete information related to the plaintiff.
Challenge presented by Jorge Yunda in embezzlement case causes the trial process to suffer delays
That was necessary before continuing with the diligence, which will have on the one hand the former mayor and his lawyers presenting the elements to sustain that Fabara has shown partiality in this case, while on the other hand, the provincial judge will be defending his power to ask questions for interrogation and cross-examination during the hearing.
On October 21, at the beginning of the sixteenth day of the trial hearing against Jorge Yunda and thirteen others, accused of embezzlement occurred in the acquisition of 100,000 tests to detect COVID-19 by part of the Ministry of Health of the Municipality of Quito, the defense of the former mayor challenged to Judge Fabara arguing that he has shown his partiality within the diligence and that what the magistrate was looking for is to sentence for the crime of influence peddling instead of embezzlement.
The trial had entered the moment when it was the defendants’ turn to present the evidence to reject the accusation. Yunda and her defense were the first to participate and had three more witnesses left.
“It is a recusal trial against one of the judges, because he was anticipating criteria, interrogating, cross-examining, bordering on the experts and witnesses, and because of his (Fabián Fabara) intention, since he realizes that there is no crime of embezzlement, but it is bordering on being sentenced for the crime of influence peddling. (…) I have passed hearings as a prosecutor and lawyer, but experience tells one where the judge wants to take, ”said Édgar Molina, part of Yunda’s defense.
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
Molina claims to have the audios that reveal Fabara’s way of acting when questioning and cross-examining; even – he says – some in which he leads the witnesses to get to another point, in addition to asking them suggestive questions under the pretext of clarifying. “The code allows you to clarify something that has been said, and you cannot clarify something that has not been said, you cannot delegitimize the testimony of an expert, and that he has done from day one that the hearing began ”.
Since last September 29, the removed mayor Yunda, who is accused as the mediate perpetrator of the crime of embezzlement, has been tried in a hearing; the former Secretary of Health Lenín Mantilla and Juan Alejandro Vinelli, manager de Salumed S. A., both accused as direct authors; and eleven more people accused as co-authors, among them, Ximena Abarca, former Secretary of Health; o Linda Guamán, former technical coordinator of the Ministry of Health.
Yunda’s lawyer believes that between tomorrow Thursday and next Friday they will be notified of the day on which the hearing will take place. Molina says he does not know if the Lema or Guerra judges will accept or deny the challengeDespite this, what he is certain of is that the lawsuit should have been filed to set a precedent for biased behavior in the midst of a transcendental audience.
Unlike what was said by other defense attorneys in this case, Édgar Molina insists that, if the challenge is accepted, the only person who should separate from the case is Fabián Fabara and not the other two judges (Motto and War). In what does coincide with the rest of the defenses is that the process, having another member in the Court, must return to zero and start again with the presentation of the evidence of the Prosecutor’s Office. (I)
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