Legal defense of Abdala Bucaram will be based on the COIP

Luigi Garcia, attorney of former President Abdala Bucaram, who was prosecuted for embezzlement, will request the judges of the National Court of Justice (CNJ for its Spanish acronym) to use the new rules of the Organic Integral Criminal Code (COIP for its Spanish acronym), which determine prescribing cases that probe the misuse of public funds in fifteen years.

Garcia argues that his client is entitled to invoke the constitutional principle of favorability which lets an individual apply in a conflict between two laws of matter, the most benign one.

According to the lawyer, the Criminal Code of 1983 stated that such cases prescribed in ten years; then Article 257 was reformed and embezzlement was punished with double that time; while, in the new Code, embezzlement cases expire in fifteen years.

Therefore, Garcia said, will ask, along with the group of lawyers formed by Bucaram (Jorge Zavala Egas and Ricardo Vanegas), prescribing the causes so that his client can return home. “We do not know what the judges will do to prevent the return of Bucaram, who has been out of the country for 17 years,” he said.

Abdala Bucaram