Prosecutor asks the Supreme Court to uphold the sentence against Andrés Felipe Arias

In a document, the The Office of the Attorney General of the Nation asked the Supreme Court of Justice to uphold the sentence issued by the Criminal Cassation Chamber of that court in 2014 against the former Minister of Agriculture Andrés Felipe Arias for his responsibility in the Agro Ingreso Seguro (AIS) scandal.

“I ask the Decision Chamber to maintain the sentence in the terms and conditions established in the contested ruling, in view of the evidence that in that process no errors or ignorance of guarantees were incurred”It reads in the file that it is signed by the 10th delegate prosecutor before the Supreme Court, Carlos Iban Mejía.

Right there, he asks the high court to confirm the sentence handed down on July 16, 2014, through which he sentenced Arias to 17 years in prison and the payment of an economic penalty of $ 30,000 million.

In the 2014 ruling, which was challenged in the second instance by Arias, the direct participation of the former official of the Álvaro Uribe government was proven in the irregularities of the AIS program that sought to support small and medium farmers in the face of the launch of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States.

According to RCN Radio, in the lengthy document the delegate of the investigating entity indicated that Arias Leyva had direct knowledge that several of the subsidies provided by the program had reached the hands of large businessmen on the Coast.

Arias defense move to avoid conviction

This Wednesday, October 21, it was known that the defense of Andrés Felipe Arias submitted a 450-page document that he hopes will help overturn the ruling that sentenced him to 17 years jail.

In the text, which is addressed to magistrate Gerson Chaverra Castro, a member of the Decision Chamber of the Supreme Court, Arias supports his defense by attacking the magistrates who convicted him a few years ago.

The first thing that the document that El Tiempo collected says, is that the installation of the trial against Arias would have been irregular, since an appeal for reconsideration was not resolved, which would violate due process.

“The run over and unconsulted installation of the trial was not only illegal but also prevented Arias from exercising another right: requesting his freedom due to the expiration of the terms that had already been requested and which had to be desisted by the skillful trick of the person presiding over the trial ”, You can read in the text that continues to raise the tone of the defense.

The document makes harsh remarks against the Supreme Court of Justice, as it points out that, although errors were corrected, the sentence “suffers from a large number of factual errors in the evidentiary assessment.” According to the defenders of the former conservative candidate for the presidency, the errors are related to the omission of evidence and even accuse the high court of having curtailed and distorted others. Arias’s defense highlights the partial vote rescue that occurred in his case.

On this, Arias’s lawyers insist that “In some situations, the charges were not attributed in the accusation with the requirements demanded by their motivation as an expression of due process.”

In fact, he points out that it was impossible for the then minister to know the list of beneficiaries of the AIS program.

The document speaks of the evidence that the Court did not consider the statement of businessman Juan Manuel Dávila Fernández de Soto -then boyfriend of ex-queen Valerie Domínguez- who maintained that he never met Andrés Felipe Arias.

They also insist that these circumstances surely “influenced” the decision in some magistrates, who condemned the former minister and who only had the vision of the case that the person in charge of the process had.

For this reason, they implore that with “serenity, objectivity and sympathy necessary in a judge,” the case be submitted to a rigorous study so that the sentence is revoked since, in their opinion, Arias did not commit any crime.

The defense decided to present the objection, because the Constitutional court It considered that there was a violation of the right to due process in the Arias file.

The former Uribe government official has argued from the beginning that he did not have the right to have his sentence reviewed, because when he was sentenced, the second instance for the gauges did not exist.

Thanks to the ruling of this high court, it will be a sub-chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice that will hear the challenge of Arias, to which this document from the Attorney General’s Office arrived that asks to confirm the sentence.