:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/NJEZVRFJ3NEEDLNILXWCKKN474.jpg "Toga cartel: Leonidas Bustos will be tried, the court rejected the challenges of the magistrates investigating him")
The latest attempt by former President of the Supreme Court of Justice Leonidas Bustos to evade criminal proceedings by the Toga Cartel, remained in that, in an attempt, after the high court rejected the challenge that he launched to the magistrates who are investigating this. Thus, the former magistrate will face a trial.
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Bustos’ strategy had been to challenge judges Ariel Torres, Blanca Barreto and Jorge Caldas to withdraw from the investigation. The former magistrate argued that those investigating him are not biased, as they still believe the testimony of former anti-corruption prosecutor Luis Gustavo Moreno.
He also argued that these magistrates could not try him because they were the same ones who sentenced the former magistrate of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court Gustavo Malo Fernández in the first instance. Arguing, thus, that he does not have the guarantees to face the process.
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What Bustos was looking for was that by removing its investigators from the case, the Court would have to appoint new ones who should have assessed the entire process from scratch. Request that was denied in a 19-page document in which co-judges Alejandro Felipe Sánchez, Pablo Elías González Monguí and Ricardo León Molina López denied Bustos’ recusal.
The co-judges caution, as quoted in The weatherthat in the conviction of the former magistrate Malo Fernández there was no indication that would compromise the criminal responsibility of Bustos:
“It is not possible to affirm that with the isolated mentions which appear on the defendant here in the condemnation pronounced in the (Malo process), with regard to factual situations reported by a witness, it can be noted that they correspond to a substantial analysis of his responsibility”, specifies the document. “All the evidence has been analyzed, from the point of view of the responsibility incumbent on the former magistrate Malo Fernández, on the basis of several of the witnesses, including former magistrates of the High Supreme Court, former auxiliary magistrates and other civil servants of the same corporation, CTI investigators and private individuals”, can we read in the document of the Chamber of Associates quoted by The weather.
In their decision, the co-judges also point out that “it is observed that the occasions in which the name of the accused Bustos Martínez is mentioned occur in the context of the account of the facts given by the witness Moreno Rivera, without any value judgment relating to the presumed responsibility of the defendant mentioned”.
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They underlined that this could lead to a modification of the institutions and that it was not necessary since they had produced important results concerning this scourge.
Regarding the absence of guarantees, in the document quoted by The weather it is determined that:
“Besides, the decision in the process is informed by its own autonomous and sufficient probative context, which does not necessarily have to coincide with the case of the current accused. And even if the two procedural causes coincide in certain probative nuclei, this is not enough to activate the causality, ”added the Court, considering that it is not possible to affirm that Bustos does not have the guarantees of a fair trial.
The investigation indicates that Bustos – who had a career in this high court from 2008 until he came to preside over it – would have received around 200 million pesos from ex-prosecutor Luis Gustavo Moreno for the benefit of the senator Álvaro Ashton, investigated by the Supreme Court for his alleged relationship with the northern bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in the department of Atlántico.
“200 million pesos were delivered to him in his apartment along with a Cartier Ballon Bleu watch worth around 40 to 50 million pesos. All this verified with a set of evidence and with the statements of different witnesses. In addition, there are cameras that show that the watch and the money were given to him, ”explained the investigator.
In June 2021, the plenary assembly of the Senate of the Republic had approved the formal indictment against the former magistrate, with an unusual majority: 65 votes for and zero against. During this session of the upper house of Congress, then-Senator Edward Rodríguez played a video of former anti-corruption prosecutor Luis Gustavo Moreno – who was also part of this cartel – bluntly admitting that Leonidas Bustos had also received part of the bribes.
A telephone intercept between lawyer Leonardo Pinilla, partner of former anti-corruption prosecutor Gustavo Moreno, and Alejandro Lyons Muskus was also taken into account as evidence.
In the latter, Pinilla is heard to point out that there was corruption in certain judicial proceedings in charge of the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the High Court, against the members of Congress Musa Abraham Besaile Fayad, Luis Alfredo Ramos and Hernán Francisco Andrade.
“Acts of corruption were committed to obtain decisions favorable to these members of Congress. According to the meaning of these conversations, the former magistrates José Leonidas Bustos, Francisco Ricaurte and Gustavo Malo would have been involved in these acts of corruption”, indicates the document filed by the legislator.
The document, delivered by the representative in charge of the investigation, includes other evidence such as statements by former senators Musa Besaile and Hernán Andrade; Senator Germán Barón Cotrino, the former Attorney General in charge Fabio Espitia and other magistrates of the High Courts.
According to former senator Rodríguez, former magistrate Bustos gave instructions to his subordinates on how to proceed in the cases of those who benefited from the cartel. “He was the one who said which members of Congress they should go get, what he should tell them, and they met in different apartments to figure out what the next steps were,” he said.
The former magistrate, for his part, clarified that the only testimony that the investigators have against him is that of the former anti-corruption prosecutor. According to Bustos, this declaration is not enough to prove his participation in the acts of corruption. According to the former magistrate, Moreno’s audios are “small out-of-context samples of lengthy conversations, lasting several hours.”