The judge in the mask case renounces San Chin Choon and Malaysia’s cooperation for being a country that flogs prisoners

Neither as a witness nor as a defendant. The judge in the mask case, Adolfo Carretero, will not send a rogatory commission to Malaysia again to hear the version of the businessman San Chin Choon about the sale of medical supplies to the Madrid City Council through commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño. The magistrate alleges, among other reasons, that he renounces the cooperation of a country that has requested judicial reciprocity and that he could flog any national that Spain handed over to him, as stated in the penal code of the Asian country.

The interest in questioning San Chin Choon again came from one of the two investigated in Spain, Alberto Luceño. The defendant has been insisting that the Malaysian businessman has indeed collaborated with the Spanish investigation, that the rogatory commission is misunderstood and that San Chin Choon himself revealed it in an interview with the Efe news agency.

However, Judge Carretero recalls that San Chin Choon availed himself of the right that his country’s legislation gives him not to testify during the investigation phase, not even as a witness, and that this was clearly reflected in the rogatory commission sent by the Malaysian authorities to Spain.

To send that letter rogatory, the Malaysian authorities requested a commitment of judicial reciprocity from the Spanish authorities. “Malaysia has a dualist system of international law and its Government has demanded reciprocity from the Spanish Government in writing, including respect for the punishment of flogging so that it can be applied to those extradited from Spain to Malaysia for the same crime that we are investigating and that is penalized in that Asian country ”, picks up Carretero’s car, to which he has had access elDiario.es.

Luceño’s defense sought to demonstrate that the five million euros he earned plus the million that Luis Medina Abascal pocketed were part of an agreement with the Malaysian businessman, which would make them intermediaries and not commission agents. The accusation of the main crime imputed to them, the fraud, would therefore decline as there had not been an additional cost agreed by Medina and Luceño for the sanitary material at the hardest moment of the pandemic, but rather it would have been accrued from the amount agreed with the Consistory from Madrid.

Luceño alleged that San Chin Choon had said so in an interview with the state agency Efe. However, Judge Carretero mistrusts the aforementioned statements by the Malaysian businessman. “It was made outside any official channel, it was carried out by telephone in Malay and with an unknown person, therefore lacking the necessary rigor so as not to harbor suspicions about its translation, purpose, motive, etc.”, Carretero collects in his reasoned resolution . “San Chin Choon already said, through official channels, that he was not going to testify, so he is now going against his own acts,” adds the magistrate in his order, which is dated Wednesday, July 13 .

In any case, the judge downplays what the Malaysian businessman could declare because Medina claims not to know him and Luceño, who would have dealt with him in the past in the importation of meat, “has not said anything in his declaration of manner, time and place of the commission’s pact with San Chin Choon and less valuable documentary evidence of conversations, emails, whatsapp…”.

If I were to believe that the interview is true, adds the judge, it should be noted that San Chin Choon said that “he had limited himself to carrying out what Mr. Luceño had done in Spain, without setting any commission of any kind, a totally contrary version to which Mr. Luceño said in his statement,” the order continues.

In the interview published by the Efe agency on April 28, the alleged San Chin Choon said he was in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, described the transaction with “the Government”, referring to the Madrid City Council, as “clean” and He made sure he was completely calm. Probably the most controversial question of the answers was the one in which he said that he had answered in writing the 19 questions that the authorities of his country had asked him, included in the letter rogatory from Spain. The number coincides with the questions included by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in the cooperation request to Malaysia.

The popular accusations had requested that San Chin Choon go on to hold the status of being investigated for having allegedly participated in the deception of the Madrid City Council, having agreed to disproportionately inflate the price of the masks, gloves and antigen tests that the Consistory acquired for about 16 million dollars.

The request of the new commission, which would be nothing more than a reiteration of the first, is neither necessary, because it has already been done, nor is it legally possible, for the reasons alluded to in this order, nor is it useful for the investigation because It would not contribute anything, after the statements of those investigated Medina and Luceño, so in accordance with article 311 of the Criminal Procedure Law, it is not appropriate to send any rogatory commission to Malaysia, ”concludes the judge’s order.

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