Bolivia: Prosecutor asks for maximum sentence for lawyer who defended Peruvian Martín Belaunde and Jeanine Áñez

The Public Prosecutor’s Office bolivia reported this Monday that he presented the formal accusation against Jorge Valda, former lawyer of the Peruvian Martín Belaunde and current jurist of the former temporary president Jeanine Añezfor alleged suspicious banking movements and asks for the maximum penalty, which is 10 years.

The departmental prosecutor of La Paz, William Alave, stated that the lawyer is investigated for the alleged crime of legitimization of illicit profitsfor allegedly having made bank movements of large sums of money “that do not coincide” with their economic activity between 2008 and 2017, according to a bulletin from the State Attorney General’s Office.

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Alave maintained that during the preparatory stage of the investigation, “several indicative elements” have been collected, such as, for example, a financial intelligence report from 2017 and from other financial entities that indicate that The jurist deposited large sums of money to his accounts as well as to those of his relatives.

“Among the deposits and transfers he made in two financial entities, a deposit for the payment of fees in the amount of 278,076 dollars is strikingan amount that is not related to your profile”, said the coordinator of the Anticorruption Prosecutor, Eddy Flores.

The report from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) details some of the lawyer’s transactions, such as one for more than 19,000 dollars from an account in Peru and another 65 deposits to third-party accounts, according to the statement.

Also The jurist took out a loan in 2009 of 68,000 dollars that had to be paid until 2039, but in March 2015 he paid the total amount of the loan “two months before Belaunde’s escape” and an alleged tax evasion is also being investigated, the bulletin indicates.

With these data, the Public Ministry presented the formal accusation and asks for the maximum sentence for the crimes investigated, which is 10 years in prison.

A Peruvian man Martin Belaundeaccused of alleged acts of corruption in his country, was extradited by Bolivia to Peru in May 2015, after being arrested in a town in the Bolivian Amazon when he was hiding in a house waiting to flee to Brazil.

The businessman had escaped days before from the house arrest he was serving in the house of relatives in La Paz, whose government was preparing his surrender to the Peruvian authorities after having twice rejected his request for refuge.

Peru asked Bolivia for the extradition of Belaunde for the crimes of embezzlement (misappropriation of public funds) and illicit association for allegedly managing the interests of private companies to award them contracts with the State in regional governments and thus obtain personal economic benefits.

The former jurist Belaunde is one of the lawyers of the former temporary president of Bolivia Jeanine Añezwho has been preventively detained in a prison in La Paz for more than a year for the cases called “coup d’état I and II” due to the political and social crisis of 2019 after the failed elections.

Source: Elcomercio

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