POLICE OFFICERS LINKED TO PROCEEDINGS AND REMANDED IN CUSTODY BY JUDGE FOR SMUGGLING GASOLINE

Guatemala, October 2, 2012. Yesterday, Cruz Felipe Lorenzo, chief of Police Station 13, and officer Jorge Roberto Coc Tepaz were linked to proceedings and remanded in custody by order of Court B of the First Criminal Instance for High-risk Matters. The pair are alleged to have maintained ties to a criminal organization involved in smuggling fuel since 2008 (Gasofa Case).

At the initial appearance, Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez found sufficient evidence against the accused parties and, therefore, Lorenzo was linked to proceedings on charges of criminal association, interfering with the course of justice and customs fraud. Coc Tepaz, however, was linked to proceedings on a charge of interfering with the course of justice.

At the proceedings, recordings were presented of telephone taps that the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) had conducted during the case investigation. These recordings offered evidence of the communication that had taken place between the two accused parties and other members of the criminal structure for the purposes of smuggling gasoline and blocking investigations.

Investigations established that the police chief and his subordinate presumably contributed by planning the route of the fuel that entered the country illegally at the Pedro de Alvarado customs check point. The fuel was transported from El Salvador to Guatemala City in order to be sold.

The criminal organization paid the police chief and other police officials so that they would not cooperate with the MP investigation (supported by CICIG). The police chief was aware that the investigation was taking place. The officer Coc Tepaz, on the other hand, allowed the tanker trucks to pass through in exchange for a specific sum of money.

The initial appearance of Erick Estuardo Lucas Díaz, deputy inspector of the National Civil Police; Willian Estuardo Lemus Ramírez, former employee of the Superintendence of Tax Administration (SAT); and Hilma Nohemí Pineda Álvarez, SAT customs specialist, was scheduled for tomorrow by the judge. These parties were arrested on September 28, 2012 together with the police chief and the police officer.

CICIG acts as a complementary prosecutor in these criminal proceedings.