translated from Spanish: “World’s Most Dangerous Chilean” Richard Riquelme Faces Trial in Holland

On Tuesday, he began the lawsuit in the Netherlands against Chilean Richard Riquelme Vega, dubbed “the most dangerous Chilean in the world”. Riquelme was charged with the offences of laundering property and leading a criminal organization of Moroccan origin and operating in Europe, for which he was extradited in March 2018.Since then, he hopes – in pre-trial detention – to face his trial, which is expected to be extended by five days. As his lawyer Leon Van Kleef explained, the judicial system in the Netherlands does not provide for a proposal for punishment by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the time of filing an indictment, until after the trial was over, and it will be the court’s power to impose a judgment in accordance with the provisions of each offence in its judicial order and on the basis of the evidence that was presented in the proceedings.” The penalty margin for the crimes against him is only 10 years and 8 months,” he said, stressing that “if convicted, the maximum sentence is likely not to be applied to him, usually that does not happen and is likely to be only two-thirds of the total sentence.” On the evidence to be presented against him, and with which the Public Prosecutor’s Office of that country intends to prove the facts attributed to Riquelme, Van Kleef added that “more than 75% of them were obtained on an intelligence basis, so it is information that – formally – cannot be used as evidence.” They have emails that come from encrypted phones and the problem with that is that, if we have an embedded email address, we don’t know who it is from,” he said, ensuring that “a communication is being linked to him, but we don’t know who validates it. Also, if you have encrypted phone communication, that information is quite complicated, there is no witness against it, or phone recordings against it, or microphone recordings, there is nothing, and that is complicated,” the advocate insisted. And he reiterated that he was confident in his defense strategy in which he has worked daily with Riquelme. “He is mentally strong to face judgment, ” said the lawyer, mentioning that his representative is isolated in a high-security prison, with little contact other inmates and with appropriate conditions to avoid catching Covid-19.Finally, Leon Van Kleef alluded to the nickname that Richard Riquelme received in Chile as “the most dangerous Chilean in the world”, mentioning that it was the originality of the Chilean press “because it is sexiest” to call it so.” That has no basis and in Holland it is not known that way, in opportunities they have qualified it that way, but because the Chileans do. I could also be rated as the most dangerous Dutchman in the world, but there is no sustening,” the lawyer said. Detention in ChileRichard Riquelme Vega was arrested in October 2017 in Chile, after arriving in the country from Dubai, at which point there was no international arrest warrant. His arrest was marked by Interpol Chile’s questioning of the police procedure, which even called into question its danger. This was demonstrated by the agency through a reserved report sent to the Supreme Court, on that occasion, in which the investigative police detailed how the capture of Riquelme by OS-7 was carried out, emphasizing, among other assessments, that the red notification he gave rise to his arrest was out of time and ineffective as it was filed three days after his entry into the country. This at the time of Riquelme’s arrest, there was only a blue notification in the Automatic Search System database requested by the International Cooperation and Extraditions Unit of the National Prosecutor’s Office (UCIEX) “under an investigation into the drug trafficking crime of the North Central Regional Prosecutor’s Office” and that is only intended to obtain information , locate or identify a person who is presenting an interest in a police investigation. The above, according to the report, states that with that alert the required has “no restriction of displacement”, which is why “he was allowed to enter the country in immigration control”.

Original source in Spanish