Six facing  $51 million  Casco Viejo embezzlement probe

Former Public Works (MOP) Minister Federico Suarez is among six people under investigation by the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, for supposed cost overruns in the restoration works of Casco Viejo the Old Quarter of the capital during the last government.

The work was carried out by Odebrecht the scandal-plagued Brazilian, construction company. 

The list  includes ex-MOP employees Jorge Churro Ruiz, María Eugenia González, and Crescencio Pomares.

Sergio Fernández Sour and the businessman Marcelo De La Rosa, of the Louis Berger Group, who made the environmental impact study of the project, are also on the list of defendants.

The group of people is investigated for the alleged commission of crimes against the public administration, and in various forms of embezzlement in documents of the Eleventh Criminal Court reports La Prensa.

Suarez is detained for this and other cases in at the facilities of the Directorate of Judicial Investigation. Meanwhile, Churro Ruiz is being eld in El Renacer prison while he is being prosecuted for the Blue Apple case.

A draft decision – whose rapporteur is the judge José Ayú Prado -, which declares illegal the arrest of the former minister for the case of the restoration of the  the old Tcity . Recently the Eleventh Criminal Court granted Suarez $1.5 million bail in the same process.

An audit of the Comptroller’s Office determined that in the rehabilitation works of the old city t there was a surcharge of $51.4 million.

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