B410 Judge shares office with lead lawyer

The transparent door of office number 601 in the Masval Tower, located in the 9th district of the capital, reads “Ortiz Recinos & Asociados”. This is the headquarters of the José Alexandre Ortiz Ruiz law firm, which holds two important positions in the judiciary.

The first power has been exercised since he was elected as a judge of the Court of Appeal at the end of last year. This year, he served as a nomination commissioner for the second time, responsible for nominating candidates for Supreme Court judges from 2024 to 2029.

On August 16, prosecutors for economic crimes raided his office in the wake of the B410 tax evasion case. The office, which has several rooms, is the registered address of David Francisco Barrera Maldonado and José Luis Orpín Mollinedo, representatives of most of the companies involved in the case and notaries.

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According to investigations by the Superintendence of Tax Administration (SAT), Varela set up more than 400 companies without real assets or infrastructure with the aim of evading the state treasury of at least 300 million quetzales and carried out transactions of nearly 6 billion quetzales during the administration of Alejandro Giammattei.

He graduated as a lawyer from Leonardo da Vinci University in 2017 and has served as legal representative, manager or sole administrator in 509 companies recorded in the Commercial Register from 2004 to date. At the moment, only 62 of these appointments are valid, while the rest have been cancelled.

On the other hand, at least 75% of the companies mentioned by SAT were created with the assistance of Oropín Mollinedo.

What Barrera Maldonado, Olopim Molinedo and Judge Ortiz Ruiz have in common is that all three of Mashualtá’s registered offices are listed in the directory of the Guatemalan College of Lawyers and Notaries at 601. Barrera Maldonado also indicates that address on his business cards.

The National Tax Administration made the B410 case public at a press conference on August 14. Two days later, prosecutors from the Public Ministry arrived at Maswalta’s office and seized documents and computers.

Juan Luis, a spokesman for the agency, reported that when consulting the public sector about the case, he was convinced that it was Barrera Maldonado who was notified of the raid and gave way to the prosecutors because he “rented a space inside the offices of Pantaleon.”

The spokesman said no action had been taken against Barrera Maldonado because there was currently no warrant for his arrest. “The case was filed last Wednesday and the investigation has just begun,” he said.

Public Square He counseled Commissioners Ortiz Ruiz and Barrera Maldonado in his office in the building. However, the secretary said they had not been there much in recent days.

Magistrate and former UNE advisor

Ortiz Ruiz began his career as a prosecutor for members of Congress and later served as legal director of the law firm Ortiz Recinos & Asociados.

In 2020, he ran as a candidate for the Court of Appeal. At that time, the Ministry of Public Affairs submitted a report to applicants who filed complaints and criminal proceedings based on the decisions of the Constitutional Court.

In the case of Ortiz Ruiz, it was reported that he was sentenced for personal fraud, special fraud, material falsehood and ideological falsehood, a process that the Metropolitan District Attorney’s Office learned about in 2009. The councillor did not confirm whether this conviction was firm.

But that did not stop a panel of 110 deputies from the former ruling party from selecting him last November to complete the Court of Appeal’s term from 2019 to 2024. He has since served as second commissioner of the Criminal Division’s Third Chamber.

On June 7, he was elected as one of the six judges of the Court of Appeal, a committee that will determine the list of candidates for CSJ judges that must be sent to the Congress of the Republic for final elections.

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New England University Advisor

In 2022, Ortiz Ruiz worked as a consultant for the National Unity Hope Bank (UNE), earning 22,000 quetzales per month.

UNE members of this legislative body said that the person who appointed him to the office was the then-caucus president, Estuardo Vargas, who was identified by the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (Feci), then led by Juan Francisco Sandoval, as one of the manipulators behind the meeting in February 2020 by Gustavo Alejos, who was suspected of several corruption cases, to interfere in the courtesy elections.

Vargas confirmed that he hired Ortiz Ruiz “to advise on issues of the bench”, but he did not specify which ones. «He is a legal professional. Several profiles were evaluated and he was hired, “he added.

As for the office he shares with Barrera Maldonado, he said it was “a professional exercise of freedom that I cannot limit.”

Public Square He approached Ortiz Ruiz at the Third Court of Appeal of the Criminal Branch to ask him why he shared an office with Barrera Maldonado and whether he knew about the more than 400 companies created by the lawyer, but the judicial officer said he was not aware of the show. He also did not respond to messages and calls at the end of this note.

On the day his office was raided, the councillor reported that he was not present. «The purpose of this investigation is to collect information or documents related to the creation of the companies that make up the alleged group of SAT B410. “This effort is active, as information and computers have been seized and are being analyzed,” said the councillor’s spokesman.

President Bernardo Arevalo described the case as “the biggest tax fraud in our history” and pledged that “corrupt institutions will not be allowed to continue to act with impunity.”

Meanwhile, the National Tax Service continues to investigate the B410 case, and according to its director, Marco Livio Díaz, the total amount of tax evasion could be as high as 800 million quetzales.