Mexico City.- Considering that the crime has not been prescribed, a federal court refused to cancel an apprehension order against Javier Moreno Valle Suárez, former president of CNI Canal 40, for an alleged tax fraud of 3 million 206 thousand 429 pesos. Ricardo Paredes Calderón, Magistrate of the Fifth Unitarian Court, denied the employer the protection with which he sought the criminal action for capture, which for 14 years prevented him from returning to the country.
According to the ruling, the offence charged in this case is prescribed until 17 July 2024, far from 17 July 2015, which the defendant’s lawyers pointed out as the date on which he continued. The magistrate specified that Moreno Valle is accused of a qualified and serious comparable tax fraud that is punishable by 3 to 9 years in prison, but precisely its aggravation increases the minimum and maximum penalty by a half. In other words, under this consideration, the penalty ranges from four and a half years to 13 and a half years in prison, and its average term – the sum of both divided by two – is 9 years in prison. However, under the second paragraph of Article 101 of the Federal Criminal Code, the limitation period is doubled when the fugitive of justice is outside the country. Thus, the arrest warrant prescribes within 18 years. To implement this deadline, the magistrate considered a report by the U.S. Marshalls, which notes that Moreno Valle has lived in three U.S. homes, both with his sister and his wife, in Houston, Texas; New York and La Joya, California.La order of apprehension against the entrepreneur was issued on July 7, 2006 by the Third Criminal Unitary Tribunal of Mexico City, on appeal, as it was denied at first instance. To account for the 18 years of the limitation period, Paredes Calderón takes as its starting point on 18 July of that year, a day after the then Office of the Attorney General of the Republic was notified of that order of capture. Although Moreno Valle’s legal situation now seems uphill, it wasn’t always the case. On 13 October 2015, the then Sixth Judge of the Federal Criminal Process District, Alejandro Caballero Vértiz – now deceased – declared this arrest warrant prescribed, noting that the deadline for prosecuting this crime expired on July 17 of that year. The PGR appealed, and on 20 January 2016, Judge Isabel Porras Odriozola of the Third Unitary Court reversed that decision and instead terminated the exercise of criminal proceedings and the validity of the arrest warrant. Another apprehension order was also filed against Moreno Valle in 2005 in the First District Court in Criminal Proceedings of the DF, for a tax fraud of 2 million 792 thousand 880 pesos.
