This Monday, the justice system acquitted the previous commander in chief of the Military, Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba, and his spouse, Ana María Pinochet, of the crime of cash laundering.
Unanimously, the magistrates of the Fourth Oral Felony Trial Courtroom of Santiago determined to acquit the accused. The sentence shall be introduced subsequent Monday, August 5.
“The bottom crime couldn’t be linked to cash laundering maneuvers and, particularly, the injection of money into checking accounts and bank cards,” mentioned Decide Carolina Escandón throughout the studying of the decision.
The Public Ministry had accused the couple of utilizing cash from the Military’s reserved bills to inject them into their private accounts. Because of this, they requested for 15 years in jail for Fuente-Alba and 10 years in jail for Pinochet.
Through the trial, it was revealed how the previous uniformed man and his spouse had allegedly diverted giant sums of cash to private accounts, which might have been used to buy autos, pay for residences, amongst different makes use of.
“For those who rely the variety of operations that had been carried out in money, you understand that this particular person (Fuente-Alba) went to the financial institution each two days. Which is one thing completely uncommon,” mentioned North Central Prosecutor José Morales throughout closing arguments.
Through the studying of the sentence, the court docket questioned points of the investigation led by the Public Prosecutor’s Workplace, which raised “doubts about the true accuracy of the financial institution statements” that had been integrated throughout the trial.
They accused that “there was a must deepen the evaluation of Fuente-Alba’s bank card actions to find out if all money funds had been actually in money. The dearth of those receipts made it troublesome to observe the entire path of fund actions and ensure the sources of revenue and bills.”
As well as, they pointed to the function of the Commissioner of the Investigative Police (PDI) Claudio Escobedo, mentioning that he didn’t report on the procedures carried out on the crime of cash laundering: “Though the detection of suspicious patterns is the start of the investigation, a “Cash laundering experience should go a lot additional.”
“Strong proof and verifiable background data should be collected to strongly help its conclusions (…). The power of the proof is crucial. The opinions or suspicions of the skilled should not sufficient, however goal components are required that help the conclusions unequivocally,” they added.
Then again, they said that there are “affordable doubts” in regards to the solidity of the accusation, because the inconsistency noticed “between the results of the supposed asset evaluation carried out by the skilled Cristian Álvarez and that contained within the accusation, from the perspective of the rise in property”.
“Whereas the skilled solely thought-about property, the tax accusation referred to web value, which by accounting definition consists of each property and liabilities. (…) This discrepancy means that the accusation was not adequately supported by the skilled report or that the skilled report didn’t meet the technical requirements essential to validly help the accusation,” they added.
Within the opinion of the magistrates, this inconsistency generated “affordable doubts” in regards to the “solidity of the tax accusation and the rigor, seriousness and reliability of the asset evaluation on which the Prosecutor’s Workplace relied to hold out its accusation. In that sense, the proof relating to the alleged unjustified improve was not confirmed.”
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