Ineffective audit lets ex-Minister off one hook, more waiting

An “ineffective”  audit by the Comptroller General led a Criminal Court judge to declare  a case against  the former Minister of Social Development, Guillermo Ferrufino null and void.,

He had been charged with the rental of helicopters with funds from the now-defunct National Assistance  Program (PAN), during the previous administration.

In a ruling dated November 8, Judge Leslie Alberto Loaiza alleges that the punishable act is not

proven “because the audit of the Comptroller General of the Republic is ineffective.” Therefore he

admits a nullity incident presented by Ferrufino’s lawyer and, consequently, declared the process against the former minister null and void.

In this same case, Judge Loaiza had already ordered the file of the criminal case in relation to the former director of the PAN, Rafael Guardia Jaén, who had signed an effective collaboration agreement with the anti-corruption prosecutor of discharge Javier Miter Burgos, in which he confessed to crime against public administration. when  State entities paid for flight hours of helicopters that did not materialize, according to the procedures that the Second Anti-Corruption Prosecutor made at the time.

Ferrufino who spent two years in preventive detention before being moved to country arrest, during which he was booked for impaired driving, He is still not finally off the prosecutor’s hook, as other corruption charges are pending.

The former Minister is not totally off corruption hooks as the decision is being appealed and he is facing three other criminal proceedings. He is called to trial in two cases, for unjustified enrichment in the Eleventh Criminal Court and for corruption in the Thirteenth Court.

The First Criminal Court has yet to decide whether to call him to trial for money laundering.