“From the beginning we always made it clear that we were innocent,” Matta Waldurraga said at her exit from the hearing on Tuesday.
Ramón Matta Waldurraga was acquitted Tuesday – December 12 – of the crime he faced with the Honduran justice for money laundering.
The acquit was given by a unanimous vote of the Sentencing Court and the reading of the sentence was scheduled for January 9, 2024, as detailed in the social network X, the judiciary.
We are very happy about the ruling and that justice was done, Matta Waldurraga said as he left the courtroom.
He added that it was shown that there is a persecution, an apology to the Matta last name and there are sweeping and they wanted and wanted to force it to seek guilt and thank God we showed that it was not so.
“I have to thank you, honor and glory to heavenly father, from the beginning we always made it clear that we were innocent and here an era of persecution against the surname ends,” he said.
Matta Waldurraga’s defense, the lawyer, Seccar Cálix, said that it was achieved with the presentation of 8,137 evidence that proving the lawful provenance of all transactions carried out by Matta Waldurraga.
Every penny he entered Matta Waldurraga’s bank accounts was credited, while indicating that the case should never have been brought to an oral and public trial.
With the resolution, Matta Ballesteros’ son remains full freedom and the precautionary measures against him have been revoked.
Accusation of Honduran justice
Investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) through the financial expertise of capital movements indicate that Matta’s money income was disproportional in relation to what his companies reported as profits.
The evidence provided by the State accusing entity in the oral public trial against Matta indicates that the first of the financial inconsistencies detected occurs in 2008 when the defendant reported to the extinct Executive Directorate of Revenue (DEI), an amount and in his bank accounts he had more than seven million lempires of what was declared.
According to the MP, between 2002 and 2017, the revenues of Matta’s financial products amount to more than 36 million lempiras; however, of these funds, more than 18 million were from sources not known or supported.
On these assertions, Marlon Duarte, Matta’s legal representative, said: “They are total inconsistencies in that expertise; as you can say that she (the expert) does not know the origin of an amount of money for the formation of a company, if the deed itself clearly establishes at the origin of the goods.
Extradited to Honduras
Stop with his feet and hands and under a strong police operation he was transferred in October 2022, Honduran Juan Ramón Matta Waldurraga, after arriving extradited to Palmerola International Airport from Colombia.
The Honduran came to serve a 26-month prison sentence in the United States for the crime of drug trafficking, after voluntarily surrendering to justice in October 2017.
The Negro, as he is known, was accused by the U.S. government of conspiring to distribute a substance containing cocaine – between January 2005 and February 2010, knowing that the drug would then be imported to the United States, the indictment of the East District Court of New York said.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in El Heraldo