Two strikes against sticky-fingered lawmakers

Lawmakers in the National Assembly who may have delved too deeply into the taxpayer-funded cookie jar during the last administration suffered two strikes on Tuesday, November 26.

The Fifteenth Criminal Court announced that it declared “complex”  a case to the detriment of the Assembly related to irregularities in checks.

It granted the Public Prosecutor a total of 14 more months for the investigation in charge of the prosecutor Adecio Mojica.

The fifteenth judge Leslie Loaiza said that “the summary can be considered as a complex case since it is found in the catalog of crimes required by law to be considered as such.”

Loaiza recalled that the judge has the power to authorize the extension of the summary “in exceptional cases and of great complexity due to the accumulation of people”.

That request was submitted to the court by prosecutor Mojica, on November 20.

Parallel to this case, prosecutor Leyda Sáez advances an investigation for irregularities in the collection of checks from the National Assembly, a process in which the alleged commission of crimes against the public administration

This case is in the accusatory criminal system and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor issued an official letter to the Comptroller General to provide information on 36 checks from the National Assembly’s forms, a process in which she investigates a  National  Bank teller that changed checks.

The investigated cashier allegedly changed at least 318 checks in the amount of $808,888, which came from alleged payments to personnel included in payrolls of Assembly deputies.