On Monday night, a large majority consisting of 38 legislators voted in favor of the Attorney General’s Office of Ethics (PEP) to re-investigate former president Luis Guillermo Solís for breaching the duty of probity in the case of cementazo.
This was decided at 7:10 p.m. when approving an affirmative report of the majority of the special commission of the Congress that made that recommendation, after concluding that in a first investigation the PEP was omitted for exempting the former president from ethical faults without having extended the inquiries and even without interviewing him.
The petition to the Attorney General’s Office to reopen the file against Solís was supported by the National Liberation (PLN), Christian Social Unit (PNC), National Restoration (PRN), independent New Republic, National Integration (PIN) parties, Christian Social Republican (PRSC), Frente Amplio (FA) and the independent Erick Rodríguez.
Only the fraction of the ruling Citizen Action Party (PAC) opposed the Prosecutor’s Office reopening a process against the former president and voted in favor of a negative minority report signed by legislator Laura Guido in the investigative commission, according to which there are no grounds to argue that Solis incurred in faults in the duty of probity, despite sufficient evidence and strong arguments to prove otherwise.
In an intervention in the Plenary, Guido discredited the affirmative majority report and said that conclusions about people cannot be reached from simple suspicions. She criticized, in addition, that the majority of legislators have questioned the resolution of the PEP without deepening in a substantive debate.
With its decision, the PAC also ignored the majority report of the special commission of the Legislative Assembly that investigated the case of Chinese cement in 2017 and was signed by the former deputy and founder of that political group, Ottón Solís.
According to that first report, Luis Guillermo Solís did not comply with the duty of probity in the case of cementazo, one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country.