Alexis Mera must answer for the contract signed with a legal firm

Ecuadornews:

The Government gave the Prosecutor’s Office information on a new corruption incident in the Correa regime, which would have caused the damage of $ 9.1 million to the State. The 11 inquiries in the Odebrecht case will be unified.

The 11 investigations opened in the Odebrecht Prosecutor’s Office regarding the corruption case, which were handled separately, will be unified. This is due to the fact that the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office lifted the clause that prevented the sharing of evidence between files. This is one of the results of the efforts made last week by the Attorney General, Ruth Palacios, in Brazil, where she met with the authorities of that country and officials of the construction company.

At a press conference, together with the Anticorruption Secretary, Iván Granda, Palacios reported what was achieved. She explained that two officials of the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office will respond to Ecuador’s demand for information. In addition, in the coming days they will receive, by videoconference, the versions of Luiz Mameri and José Santos, ex-executives of Odebrecht.

The statements will be made in the presence of the 11 prosecutors who have case files, so that each one asks questions according to the line of investigation that he / she carries out and thus achieve progress. “We have 11 prosecutors investigating the Odebrecht case to determine criminal liability. We continue working while the audience is being held, via telematics, “he said.

Palacios expects that this accumulation of cases would be in five and the reduction in the number of prosecutors who know this information will be concrete until the day when a date can be defined for the Mameri and Santos versions. The Prosecutor said that it is possible that the executives of the construction company are not being processed in the country, because they are already serving sentences in Brazil.

The Anticorruption Secretary, Iván Granda, highlighted the importance of this agreement, because the dispersion of investigated causes made it difficult to advance research. “There are many ways to hide, one is to put it under a desk, another is to subdivide the research,” he said. Regarding the steps he took in Brazil, he said that one of the five members of the International Commission for the investigation of corruption cases (announced by President Lenin Moreno) will be Brazilian.

The delegate will also be one of the Odebrecht prosecutors. He also indicated that there will be cooperation between the Police of both countries in the fight against corruption. New case of corruption Granda delivered yesterday, to the prosecutor Palacios, documentation on a new fact of corruption committed in the previous government.

These are alleged irregular payments of $ 9.1 million within the construction of the Multipurpose Baba and Carrizal-Chone projects, which was in charge of the construction company OAS. The illicit would have been presented in the payment of a fictitious consultancy within the Odebrecht plot, since the two companies carried out joint projects in Latin America.

Granda said that, although some data about the OAS corruption network was already known, the new thing is that now the Prosecutor’s Office has the judicial denunciation of Alexandre Portela, ex-director of that company, which “was taken last month”.

Regarding the contract signed in 2017 by Alexis Mera, former Legal Secretary of the Presidency, with the Brazilian law firm Tozzini Freire Abogados to learn about the Odebrecht case, this document is not in the Presidency or the Attorney General’s Office. “Alexis Mera must respond to justice,” he said.

Granda added that he has indications of a possible irregular action on the handling of documents of the Odebrecht case that arrived in the country in the first criminal assistance of June 2017. “When we corroborate it we will inform about it”, he anticipated.

Six types of crimes are investigated

Two years, two months and 13 days after the United States Department of Justice (US) revealed that Odebrecht paid bribes for $ 33.5 million to Ecuadorian officials, investigating six types of crimes. Money laundering, illicit association, embezzlement, organized crime, bribery, and concussion are the crimes, but there is still no enforceable sentence.

As of December 2017, the Office of the Prosecutor registered 26 cases opened for bribes. With 10, money laundering was the crime with the largest number of files. Today it is known that 11 of the 26 passed to previous investigation. Some had a date for a hearing to formulate charges, but they never materialized. Among them is the file for money laundering against Ricardo R., uncle of former Vice President Jorge G. (I)

Source: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/judicial/12/alexismera-bufetejuridico-odebrecht