Businessman Víctor de Aldama turned to judge Santiago Pedraz to demand his “immediate exit” because, he claims, his fundamental rights were violated. considers that the investigation into the alleged hydrocarbons plot, which allegedly defrauded up to €182 million in VAT and for which he is in prison, is prospective; said that his the imputation is unfair; and ensures that pre-trial detention is used “as a pressure instrument“to get him to collaborate and reveal new data.
This is clear from the appeal that the commissioner of the Koldo case has just presented before the National Court, and to which ABC had access, in which he strikes out the arguments used against him in this second case of “vague, imprecise and weak”. He maintains that they cannot be taken into account as rational indices to justify a measure as heavy as deprivation of liberty.
“In reality, the prison becomes an instrument of pressure to obtain possible unidentified assets, of which we do not know if they exist,” we can read. Along the same lines, he assures: “The court cannot consider resorting to pre-trial detention promote a heritage or economic investigation obtain the collaboration of the persons investigated or facilitate an investigation to the detriment of the freedom of the persons investigated, although the State has all the official apparatus, fiscal and police assistance, national and international, to ensure the success of the investigation. investigation, which cannot be carried out to the detriment of the freedom of the investigator.”
Last Thursday, the president of the Court of Instruction number 5 of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, sent the commissioner to prison, according to the criteria of the anti-corruption prosecutor Luis Pastor, for alleged crimes of criminal organization, against the Public Treasury and money laundering. They argued that there was a risk of flight given their seriousness and the nature high penalties that they wear. It should be mentioned that the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard would have detected transfers for amounts greater than 73 million euros in Portugal, Colombia and China.
According to the investigation, Aldama co-led an alleged criminal organization that had a series of instrumental business networks – used both to defraud the Treasury and to launder illegally obtained funds – with another businessman, Claudio Rivas. His sister, Maria Luisa, is placed as deputy director and, presumably, they would have had the collaboration of other collaborators and a series of nominees located in the administrative bodies of the supplier companies.
However, in Aldama’s defense, this conclusion which “would allow us to conclude that María Luisa Rivas acted under the orders and indications of the two leaders of the organization, Víctor de Aldama and his brother Claudio Rivas, is again voluntary and cannot be objectively supported and it is asserted only in order to be able to construct an artificial and unjust imputation.
She therefore emphasizes that the measure of pre-trial detention is disproportionate and responds to a “immediate exemplary punishment“. And even more so when, on September 23, he explains, the judge who instructed him in the Koldo case, Ismael Moreno, allowed him to leave Spain and on October 7, he returned and reported to the National Court. “It is difficult to believe that a risk of flight can reasonably be assessed in these circumstances,” we can read.
In the document, Aldama’s lawyer, José Antonio Choclán, also claims that, in any case, the police did not actually hand him over to court within the 72-hour period required by law because, according to him, “the surrender is not only a question of the transfer of the detainee to the cells of the National Court” but of the “effective provision of the detainee in the judicial presence”. And therefore, he concludes, his admission to prison after the fixed period has been agreed and it should declare nullity of the prison order.
In the event that Judge Pedraz rejects the appeal, it will have to be brought before the Criminal Chamber of the National Court.
