Diana Salazar: “The private accusation of the UAFE is with a view to confiscation”

Ecuadornews:

What protocol is sought to recover the assets?

In the four months at the head of the UAFE I have strategically participated in international forums with experts. When I returned, in coordination with my technical team, we prepared a flow chart in which the activities that each of the State institutions had to develop in the recovery process were identified. We agree to establish the protocol for the recovery of money laundering.

What does it consist of?

Define what each institution should do. In the case of the UAFE we have the obligation to identify and track the funds and once identified inside or outside the country we have to pass the information to the Office of the Prosecutor so that it requires the countries in which the preventive freeze has been identified to begin with the process of return or repatriation.

What have you managed to identify?

Some plots related to acts not only corruption but other crimes, the products of these analyzes have been sent to the Prosecutor’s Office, eight reports, and other information that we have the obligation to transmit in a confidential manner, in person, so that they can advance your investigations.

What other crimes?

Drug trafficking and corruption, but people involved with corruption not in Ecuador, but from another country and who have come to carry out their operations in Ecuador.

How do the institutions participate in the recovery?

The UAFE locates and refers to the Office of the Prosecutor. Then you get a preventive detention order from a judge. The Court is referred to the requested country through criminal assistance, the Participation Council participates. Then the Foreign Ministry activates the central authorities to execute Ecuador’s request and gives us the results later. With frozen and seized assets you have to enter into a negotiation process at the diplomatic level to agree with the requested country on how to return it.

Do you need regulations?

There is, what we have to work on is an instrument in a way that governs us, as an instructive one

Are you optimistic about the recovery?

I am optimistic because in other countries it has worked, for example in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, in some cases, not exactly, we are talking about 50 million.

Without a domain extinction law, what can be done?

While we have a law we consider that we have some figures that could be used as the special orders found in the COIP, article 550, which establishes the possibility of requiring a preventive detention order to assets, funds and money that are in power or linked to people who are investigated.

What is the advantage of presenting a private accusation?

The State will be able to be represented more than the Office of the Prosecutor. It is that us, as a procedural subject, can also generate evidence, but with a view to forfeiture, that the fines established by the judges can be collected and go to the state treasury.

Are there new sectors obliged to report to the UAFE?

They are those of legal, accounting, mining and securities transport activities that will be incorporated as subjects obliged to report.

From your experience, how effective is the criminal assistance?

– They are effective when at an optimum level of communication from the Office of the Prosecutor to the Office of the Prosecutor. But if we come out of nowhere, simply to send cold trades, I do not think we have good results. The personal relationship is valid because in the cooperation subject it is based on trust, we have legal instruments, but it may be that they archive it there and never answer it. (I)

Source: http://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/dianasalazar-entrevista-fiscalia-uafe-lavado-activos-DI2291511