The Judicial Branch of the Federation admitted two new amparo claims promoted by the former Secretary of State, Rosario Robles Berlanga against the criminal proceedings initiated against her for alleged omissions in the case of the Master Scam, and against preventive detention keeps her imprisoned, without sentence, for two and a half years in the Santa Martha Acatitla prison.
In both lawsuits, the former official argues that her fundamental rights have been systematically violated by having initiated a process for a crime that – according to her lawyers – is no longer in force; a situation that, in addition, has led to the deprivation of his liberty with arguments that he considers unjustified.
With these cases, there are ten amparo lawsuits that Rosario Robles has promoted since 2019. Although he has won most of them, so far he has not been able to dismiss the charges that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) accuses him of.
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According to court documents to which Political Animal had access, the new application for amparo promoted against the process was presented by the defense lawyers of the former official before the Third District Court of Amparo in Criminal Matters based in Mexico City, which admitted it under file number 180/2022.
In this case, Robles claims that the judge in charge of his process, Ganther Alejandro Villar Ceballos, improperly decided to keep the process against him ongoing at a hearing held on February 4, 2022. This despite the fact that, allegedly and according to the defense, the crimes for which she is accused would be repealed.
This is the illicit exercise of public service in the form of omission that, according to the FGR, was perpetrated twice by Robles when she served as Secretary of Social Development and Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development in the last six-year term.
The omissions, according to the prosecutor’s office, would have occurred when Robles did not take the necessary actions to stop the contracting of services without tenders through public universities. Although it was an exception contemplated in the law, this type of contracting opened the door to the diversion of more than five billion pesos under the modality known as “The Master Scam”.
Originally, Judge Villar Ceballos had even refused to analyze the possibility that the aforementioned crime was still in force or not. But after the defense won a first amparo against this omission, the judge was forced to hold a special hearing last February in which he studied these arguments and concluded that this offense was in force.
Against this last determination Robles promoted the amparo that has just been admitted by Judge Augusto Octavio Mejía, head of the Third District Court. In this context, the judge ordered his counterpart Villar Ceballos to hand over the information related to the hearing held in February. In turn, it ordered that the FGR be notified so that it can express what it considers appropriate.
According to Robles’ defense team, if the amparo judge concludes that the crime is indeed repealed, this could mean the dismissal of the process opened against him and, therefore, that the case is definitively closed.
And again vs pretrial detention
The same federal judge, Augusto Octavio Mejía, also admitted the new request for amparo promoted by Rosario Robles and her lawyers against the decision of the judge responsible for her case to keep her in preventive detention, even though most of the arguments initially presented by the FGR have already been distorted.
In the process opened under file number 102/2022, the former official considers that the decision taken at the hearing held on December 30, 2021 in the South Prison, in which Villar Ceballos ratified the precautionary measure of preventive detention justified against him, is unconstitutional and violates his human rights.
This is because, according to the former official, it has been shown that she never tried to escape, since she voluntarily presented herself to the hearings to which she was summoned. In addition, he did not lie about the address in which he resides or process two false driver’s licenses as the FGR initially said. The argument that her family has financial resources that could help her escape has also been distorted.
However, the judge responsible for the process ratified in the aforementioned hearing the need to keep Robles in charge.Even, Ganther Ceballos rejected the proposal of the defense that he be ordered to be placed in preventive home detention, because although it has been reported that he has chronic health problems, from his perspective he can receive the necessary medical attention in the women’s prison of Santa Martha Acatitla.
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According to the defense team of the former Secretary of State, this judicial determination no longer has sufficient legal support, and is due more to alleged political pressures.
It should be remembered that, despite the fact that the scheme of “La Estafa Maestra” consists of a system of diversion of public resources that occurred in more than ten federal agencies and agencies, so far Rosario Robles is the only former Secretary of State imprisoned for these facts. There are two and a half years that he accumulates in preventive detention without the case having even reached the trial phase.
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