On December 6th, we will know if the Chinese cement importer, Juan Carlos Bolaños, will continue with an electronic ankle bracelet or if he will return to prison.
The information was corroborated by Fernando Vargas, Bolaños’ lawyer, in a telephone interview with CRHoy.com.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office requested on Tuesday that Bolaños return to pretrial arrest, after several irregularities with his electronic ankle bracelet, which CRHoy.com denounced in recent days.
According to Vargas, the Prosecutor’s Office made the petition before the Criminal Court Judge of the Second Judicial Circuit of San José during a hearing on Tuesday.
The intention of the authorities is for Bolaños to return to pretrial arrest until May 1st, 2020 because the electronic monitoring device had no battery for four hours.
The request and an abuse of power seem disproportionate to me because the Public Ministry is indicating that, in the event of a four-hour discharge of the device, compared to 5100 hours that everything worked well, it is enough to request pretrial arrest… The device has ineed been changed six times already, and even the day the battery failed, the Monitoring Section changed it, yesterday the new battery was put on indicating that there were problems with it,”
said the legal representative of the cement importer.
The lawyer explained that they will wait for the resolution on Friday at about 9:00 am to assess whether they file any type of appeal, as well as a possible appeal to the Constitutional Chamber.
Bolaños is investigated for the alleged crimes of peculation, influence peddling, crime simulation and slanderous allegations of the cementazo, following an investigation for the $36 million loan that the BCR granted him to import cement from China. He was apprehended in November 2017.
Since April this year, Bolaños Rojas enjoys the benefit of house arrest after staying about a year and a half in pretrial arrest, the suspect received permission to leave the jail for senior citizens in Alajuela and thus submit to a surgery on his knee which -as indicated at that time- had to be operated for a second time.