The president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, said Friday before a legislative commission that faces a “assembly” for the criminal accusation for alleged corruption that led the Supreme Court to ask for Congress to withdraw the constitutional jurisdiction to bring him to trial, an unprecedented decision in the Central American country.
Chaves appeared before the Parliamentary Commission that must recommend to the plenary the lifting of immunity, or not, after the accusation presented in April by the Attorney General’s Office For the crime of “concussion”, to exercise power to improperly favor a third party, with money from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, BCIE.
“What we are living has historical consequences; the entire country observes a legal assembly of the Attorney General and the Criminal Chamber”Said Chaves about the case, which is based on accusations of his former communication minister, Patricia Navarro, and businessman Christian Bulgarelli, who as a “witness of the crown”, tells his excomplices to obtain a minor penalty of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Chaves, who faces a penalty of up to eight years in prison if he is found guilty, referred to the Head of the Public MinistryCarlo Díaz, and the magistrates who sent to Congress the request to withdraw their immunity, which would require a qualified majority in a legislative assembly dominated by opposition groups.
“I am facing you accompanied by a town that supports me, literally facing an attempt with a judicial council,” he said. The president defended his innocence to the criminal accusation that he attributed to having forced the delivery of US $ 32,000 to a relative of hisfrom the payment of a 2022 contract for communication services for the presidency paid with US $ 400,000 donated by the BCIE.
“I never ordered to give money to anyone,” said Chaves, whose government, marked by constant criticism of the Judiciary, ends in May 2026, after the general elections of February. Chaves’s lawyer, José Miguel Villalobos, asked the commission to recommend the continuity of Chaves’s presidential jurisdiction. “This accusatory piece has no minimum requirements for you to recommend the removal of the jurisdiction. There is no sufficient reason, there is no reasonable basis,” concluded the lawyer after the exhibition.
