The Prosecutor’s Office has just taken substantive measures within the investigation it is carrying out against the businesswoman Esther Isabel Ventura, linked to the sale of the Lafrancol laboratory.
As revealed by EL TIEMPO, on January 13 she was summoned for the seventh time for a conciliation procedure and / or transfer of the indictment. However, the defense of the businesswoman, in the hands of former magistrate Ricardo Calvete, presented a memorandum to the prosecutor in the case, announcing that she would not attend.
(We invite you to read: Prosecutor’s Office cites key audience in Lafrancol case for the seventh time)
The businesswoman’s cousins -Viviane Ventura and Michael Ventura-, assure that, for years, Esther Ventura stopped paying them dividends and even the real business figures were hidden from them, allegations that the businesswoman denies and that the Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating since 2013, when he called her for questioning.
However, in dialogue with EL TIEMPO and in the memorandum to the Prosecutor’s Office, lawyer Calvete explained that The process against his client Esther Ventura should not be carried out by the abbreviated procedure but by the ordinary one, as indicated by resolution 00279 of 2019, issued by the Prosecutor’s Office itself. And so he told the prosecutor in the case, Mario Antonio Chaves Rodríguez.
(You may be interested: The Lafrancol manager is questioned for the sale of that pharmaceutical company)
For Calvete, this is not a minor matter, as it violates Esther Ventura’s due process. In addition, the lawyer insists that there is no crime and that the Prosecutor’s Office itself had already filed the case in 2017.
The new decision
EL TIEMPO established that prosecutor Chaves considered that, although he is autonomous in his decisions, the procedure through the ordinary route is viable, as Calvete pointed out. And immediately, he requested a new hearing, which was scheduled for March 4.
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But this time, according to records from the Paloquemao Judicial Services Center, there are three hearings in the case: one for default; another for the formulation of an accusation and another for a request for an assurance measure for the alleged crime of aggravated fraud.The criminal lawyer Jaime Lombana, attorney for Viviane Ventura and Michael Ventura in this process, had already requested that the default be applied.
There was already a transaction and that made it a res judicata. The Supreme Court denied the nullity of the arbitration ruling in favor of Esther Ventura: Calvete.
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–‘We are not avoiding the audience’
Calvete told EL TIEMPO that they are not avoiding the hearing and that the proceedings had been canceled on previous occasions because another prosecutor who was handling the case had decided to archive it.
“It lasted several months archived and in 2017 they decided to unarchive it without new elements,” he explained.
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And he added that an arbitration court in Paris had qualified as valid an advance transaction contract between his client and her cousins, due to the participation that the latter had in the laboratory: “There was already a transaction and that made it a res judicata. The Supreme Court denied the nullity of the arbitration ruling.”
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The new hearing on the case is scheduled for March 4.
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Office of the Attorney General of the Nation
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–The numbers
But Viviane Ventura and Michael Ventura insist their cousin misled them by telling them Lafrancol cost $ 40 million and selling it months later for $ 562 million.
(See here all the articles of the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO)
Thus, if the hearing on March 4 is finally held, this lawsuit, which completes 9 years, will end before a judge of the Republic.
According to Calvete, he agrees that a judge will define the case once and for all.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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