translated from Spanish: Judge doesn’t answer Duarte’s questions

“You don’t come here to question me. You hear my determination and abide by it…”
This was the only response that Javier Duarte received from the judge of Mexico City, Júpiter López Ruiz, during the almost three-hour hearing held last night in the Reclusorio Norte and in which, for the second time, he was relinked to criminal proceedings for his alleged intellectual authorship in the crime of peculado.
This exchange occurred when the former governor of Veracruz tried to question the judge and asked him to explain how he was supposed to have benefited from the 220 million pesos that, according to the investigation by the Veracruz Public Prosecutor’s Office, were diverted from the hydraulic works for which they were labeled, and transferred to other accounts of the secretary of state finance in 2014.
Read more: Judge relinks Javier Duarte back to prosecution for mediate
But the judge didn’t let himself get hooked and slowed down Duarte. He told her that if he wanted me to answer questions for that, he had a lawyer on the side. That he would just listen to him and nothing else, because his determination was already taken.
The session was chiaroscuro for the former governor and his legal team. On the one hand, his primary objective was for the judge to no longer link Duarte to the squat (as he had done in May 2018). They had won an amparo with which they managed to overturn that first decision, however, the judge stood firm in his determination.
But on the other hand, they got the judge to revoke the precautionary pre-trial detention measure he had imposed on him last year, allowing him to take this process released. While that does not benefit the former governor, who is serving a 9-year sentence for money laundering and criminal association, it could be beneficial in the future if his sentence is reduced or if he succeeds in overturning it.
Regardless of the verdict, there were key moments in the audience that clearly made Duarte uncomfortable. On at least five occasions the judge told the former governor that there was no doubt that in his government 220 million pesos that were destined for hydraulic works had disappeared, which according to the investigation left unfinished 96 sewerage, sanitation and drinking water
“It is undeniable that this money was distracted, that it was money that was labeled for an end and that it was therefore not legal to allocate it otherwise, but it is also money that was never returned and that left unfinished works,” he told the judge.
And taking advantage of the fact that since last year’s hearing the defense had argued that the offices and testimonies on which the Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office supported his case were false or obtained with torture, the judge “reminded” Javier Duarte that in the new criminal system there is the oral trial, where he can assert all those arguments, and he can defend himself.
Read more: Supreme Court analyzes to lure case against Javier Duarte on suspicion of corruption
 “How, when and where the events occurred, and everything you (the defenders) question, this is not going to be resolved right now, resolved in court and after the investigation is concluded. But just for that we have the trial, to assert the evidence there, to contradict, to question the witnesses,” said Jupiter Lopez.
The judge finally insisted to Duarte that even if it is argued that the money labeled for hydraulic works could have been taken to address other priorities, a common practice in Duarte’s government (and in other state governments), that does not take the illegality away from this action.
“But also here the borrowed money was not returned,” the judge recalled.
If it disappeared, it wasn’t me: Duarte
The judge refused to answer Javier Duarte’s questions, but allowed him to speak out freely. This was used by the former governor to emphasize “to his lordship” that his case and that of several of his former collaborators were the result of an alleged political persecution of the Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office undertaken in the management of his successor Miguel Angel Yunes.
In that context Duarte questioned whether the money attributed to him in the client had disappeared in his management, since he said that the trade where the appeal is reported was no longer from February 2017, when he had already left office. “It could have been someone else responsible, as another governor said.
Read more: Javier Duarte achieves protection against linkage to process by peculado
“This case was brought down by then-prosecutor Jorge Winckler, who is now a fugitive for misdeeds, and I say it clearly, which he carried out,” said Ricardo Reyes Retana, Duarte’s defense attorney.
The litigator also insisted on questioning the legality of the evidence submitted by the Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office, and criticized the fact that it was not taken into account that there is no evidence of the fate of that money.
At the conclusion of his speech, Javier Duarte and his lawyers stressed that the statement of Mauricio Audirac, a former finance secretary who testified that Duarte gave him the verbal order to take the 220 million, was obtained under torture. The judge said this was yet another reason to go to trial.
“Well, that’s what judgment is for. Just to carry out that debate. And if those tests were obtained with these practices that you point out are hardly going to prevail. But that’s the space where it’s time to expose all this,” the judge said.
Duarte’s legal status after the hearing
Javier Duarte will remain in prison in the Reclusorio Preventivo Norte as he is serving a sentence of 9 years in prison for criminal association and operations with resources of illicit origin, of which he has already served two and a half years. In past months, he has sued for an appeal – still pending – with which he seeks the opportunity to appeal that conviction.
In addition, if he is engaged in good behavior, the former governor could ask in about two years – when he is in full of his sentence – to be allowed to carry the other half free.
With regard to the case of livestock, promoted by the Prosecutor’s Office of Veracruz, it was set as a date on 10 February for the end of the supplementary investigation period and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to present the formal indictment allowing it to go to an intermediate hearing and subsequently to trial. This trial would legally remain at large, after the prison measure imposed on him was cancelled.
In a similar situation is another criminal proceeding severder against Duarte for not having signed the delivery-receipt act of his government, having requested a license from the governor’s office in October 2016. Nor is it a case for which Duarte needs to be imprisoned.
Absence of Veracruz Prosecutor’s Office
Contrary to what happened at the hearing on 20 May 2018 when Duarte was first linked to trial for the crime of peculado, on this occasion there was no representative of the Prosecutor’s Office of Veracruz at the hearing held at the Federal Criminal Justice Center in the Reclusorio Norte.
Only agents from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Mexico City and a representative of the Secretariat of Government of the capital were present on the side of the accuser.
At last year’s May hearing, then-prosecutor Jorge Winckler and at least two other advisers were personally present. Winckler was removed from the office of Attorney General from September by Congress in that state.
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Original source in Spanish