The legal paperwork of prosecutors Francisco Cabrera, Verónica Valdez and Jorge Arce –executing arms of the questioned attorney general, Emiliano Rolón Fernández– is huge. This maneuver not only shows procedural negligence, but also mortally wounds the legal security of the country.
The agents, in addition to their criminal ignorance about accounting tools and fabricating phantom crimesthey signed a document of alleged accusation in which they set up a chronology of the deceased’s account movements. Nicolas Leoz based on conjectures about the origin of the funds.
Read more: Suspected amnesia of Conmebol lawyer about funds in Paraguay
For the Prosecutor’s Office, which in regulatory terms should act objectively, the truth was irrelevant and despicable according to the elements of conviction that they themselves collected. They deliberately ignored documents and testimonies that proved the legality of Leoz’s movements. at Banco Atlas, part of the business group that includes ABC.
The mounting evidence is so scandalous that the Public Ministry systematically blocked the carrying out of accounting experts on the financial statements of the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol), currently chaired by Alejandro Domínguez, corresponding to the period 2010-2013. This expertise was the serious way to determine if there was real damage and under what materiality criteria it was recorded. With this, the accusation was further dismantled.
Added to this omission is the refusal to assess the total income of Nicolás Leoz between 2010 and 2016. The Prosecutor’s Office decided to close its eyes to the evidence of Inmobiliaria del Este SA, the Sanatorio Migone Battilana SA and the sale of livestock, which had already been reported the flow of millionaire sums of licit origin towards the deceased leader.
Even more serious and partial. The Prosecutor’s Office, in addition to refusing to investigate the obvious, left intentionally to mention and be interested in the trusts established with assets originated through international transfers, explicitly pursuing the bank linked to the group that was to be attacked. Investigating another bank would imply doing so with respect to one with which the company itself Conmebol, chaired by Domínguez, operated as will be demonstrated in documents that will be made known to understand the flagrant nature of the criminal prosecution interested in affecting a specific commercial group.
Accounting illiteracy
The Prosecutor’s Office brief states that Leoz recorded astronomical operations “in cash” to try to support the thesis of money laundering against his family and the directors of Banco Atlas. This argument is a monumental technical fallacy: prosecutors confuse basic accounting concepts that do not withstand a basic traceability analysis.
Read more: Leoz Case: Prosecutor’s Office usurps functions of the Superintendency of Banks, lawyer questions
For example, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Leoz deposited “in cash” US$ 5,514,300 between 2011 and 2016. However, the statement is a lie because the tax agents took as “cash” transfers, internal movements and even purchase of currencies between accounts of the same bank. They confused accounting entries with income of physical moneyshowing that they did not even verify the nature of the operations.
More rude is that in his desire to confuse he makes a comparison with supposed extractions from the Conmebol accounts in the Banco Do Brasil (conspicuously never bothered) by US$6,636,489a figure that does not even coincide at all with the numbers that credit Atlas. That is to say, the prosecutors didn’t even care about the forms.
Regarding the movements in Guaraní, the interpretation is equally erroneous. Whether due to professional incapacity or bad faith, the prosecutors Francisco Cabrera, Verónica Valdez and Jorge Arce They ignored the evidence that is already in the tax file. To cite specific examples, Inmobiliaria del Este SA presented several certificates, one from January 2011 in which it confirmed the administration of Leoz properties with charges (until then) for G. 15,466 million.
The other document is from Sanatorio Migone, which reported payments for G. 3.5 billion between 2012 and 2015made with traceable checks from Banco Atlas itself.
In short, the bank’s records are perfectly traceable and demolish the insistent – and malicious – statement of the Prosecutor’s Office regarding movements “cash” of illicit origin to support alleged money laundering.
Instead of investigating rigorously, the team of prosecutors in charge of the already known as the most nefarious attorney general in history, Emiliano Rolón, preferred the judicial stick. This operation turns legal transactions into a crude tool of political revenge orchestrated by Alejandro Domínguez, using Conmebol, and with the support of representatives of the Santiago Peña government.
The background is clear: a retaliation by Domínguez for ABC Color’s publications about the appearance of his name in the FIFAgate forensic audit and his son’s questionable business dealings Alejandro Domínguez Pérez with Petropar.
Read more: All financial operations were subject to due control
The objective of this maneuver is to silence criticism, to do so they have turned the Public Ministry into an à la carte persecution office.
They fabricated phantom complaints to support the accusatory tome
The scandal that exposes the persecution of the Public Ministry against the ABC Group It is so rude that it even shows that the Prosecutor’s Office fabricated phantom crimes to criminalize the directors of Banco Atlas.
In their persecutory zeal, the prosecutors sink into their own paragraphs. According to their thesis, Nicolás Leoz caused a loss of US$ 44.9 million to Conmebol (without carrying out serious accounting expertise) through withdrawals and deposits, all in Banco do Brasil. This is the basis of his money laundering accusation.
Banco Atlas does not even remotely appear in that structure and it is documented. However, they omit an “uncomfortable” detail: Leoz died in August 2019, being innocent under the law of Paraguay and other countries.since neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor Domínguez’s Conmebol dared to bother him while he was alive.
The key point occurs a year after the death of the leader. He April 3 and August 31, 2020, Alejandro Domínguez He negotiated with Leoz’s heirs a “comprehensive reparation.” What the Prosecutor’s Office and Conmebol criminally concealed is that this agreement extinguishes any criminal action.
Loot that the Prosecutor’s Office “forgot”
The reason for the concealment is simple because with the agreement in hand, the accusation disintegrates. The document is titled Comprehensive reparation and compensation agreement, transaction, resignations and settlement of processes.
In it, the Confederation – under the signature of Domínguez – irrevocably renounced any civil, criminal or administrative action against Leoz’s succession. He “price” of silence and peace was a disbursement of US$51,202,776; That is, the heirs paid Conmebol US$6.2 million more of what prosecutors today described as “damage” (US$44.9 million).
The situation is further aggravated because Alejandro Domínguez hid the document for six years. And the Prosecutor’s Office, who agreed to it 48 hours before presenting his mamotretohe simply decided to ignore it.
Art. 192 of Law 3440/08, which applies to legal type that was in force when Leoz supposedly incurred the alleged property damage It is very forceful in the definitions. The crime of breach of trust is a punishable act against property that is within the title of punishable acts against people’s property.
The Criminal Procedure Code, andn Art. 25, paragraph 10, establishes exhaustively that property crimes are extinguished as a consequence of the repair of the damage. if there is consent from the victim or the Public Ministry.
In short, prosecutors fabricated a crime that does not exist: trust injuryto force the existence of another that never existed: money laundering.
Cynicism or deception?
Alejandro Dominguez and his lawyer, Claudio Lovera, They sealed the pact with the widow of Leoz, María Clemencia Pérez (assisted by lawyers Ricardo Preda and Pablo Livieres). The cynical thing is that the Paraguayan Prosecutor’s Office is now pursuing the same widow and targeting Banco Atlas – an entity that did not even appear in the forensic audit – based on a complaint from Conmebol in 2021. This maneuver was presented just six months after signing irrevocable resignations to any legal action and declare that it received full reparation.
A “score” that was followed word for word
Emails, documents and metadata revealed that this case was not legal, but rather a persecution against Banco Atlas, part of the business group to which ABC Color belongs. Fingerprints revealed that every script for this montage had an author: Claudio Lovera, lawyer for Conmebol, chaired by Alejandro Domínguez. Lovera “ordered”, while prosecutors Liliana Alcaraz and Francisco Cabrera They copied “word for word” and signed.
Read more: The case: this is how the alleged “Seprelad data leak” developed
Metadata has become irrefutable evidence for the Public Ministry, although its validity seems to depend on political expediency. The “fingerprint” verification mechanism was used to sustain the process against the former president Mario Abdo Benitez and its former officials. In the case against the former president –prompted by a complaint of Horacio Cartes– are investigated crimes such as inducing a subordinate to commit a punishable act, false reporting and criminal association.
