Julia Keleher and co-defendants are demanding the rejection of corruption allegations

Former Secretary of Education Julia Keleher and some of the co-defendants in the corruption case have asked the federal court to dismiss the charges against them.

In separate motions, the dismissal was requested by Keleher, former La Fortaleza councilor Alberto Velázquez Piñol, former Puerto Rico BDO president Fernando Scherrer and Intelligent Gran Solutions (IGS) owner Aníbal Jover Pagés.

Keleher’s lawyer, María Domínguez, said the amended indictment raised seven different conspiracies.

Of this total, the lawyer indicated that Keleher is only accused in the first three schemes. In connection with these three schemes, “Ms Keleher did not commit any of the alleged offenses,” Domínguez said.

“In fact, charges 1 to 11 and 12 to 15, 16 to 23 fail to establish an offense,” he added, noting that “they fail to claim that any victim was deprived or attempted. to lack any money or bodily property ”. .

He noted that “instead, the vast majority of allegations relate to a flawed theory of honest service fraud, disguised as money or property fraud.”

“As was the case with the original indictment in this matter, the amended statement’s effort to cover these deficient allegations of honest service fraud as traditional money and property fraud fails by law,” he said.

In connection with the charges against Keleher, two other co-defendants – Sisters Mayra and Glenda Ponce Mendoza – pleaded guilty in May last year.

In turn, Scherrer’s motion states in his motion that his role in the indictment “can be summarized in one sentence: he is alleged to have been the president of the BDO company when it is alleged that the violation (law), he signed some government contracts. on behalf of the BDO as its representative, they assisted in hiring and recruiting a contractor (Alberto Velázquez Piñol) and exchanged two e-mails with that contractor which does not reflect any illegal intention or conduct ”.

He states that “so, there is not a single charge that suggests that he personally did something illegal, agreed to do something illegal or knew personally about something wrong done by others.”

“He is accused only of ordinary, legal, daily actions, which he had no reason to believe were illegal,” he continued.

Meanwhile, among the proposals of Velázquez Piñol, he points out that the documents of the public ministry show that he had a professional relationship with BDO that began before the merger with Parissi, in which he received commissions from the awarded contracts and that, in addition, he carried out works consulting with the Department of Education and Health Services Administration (ASES).

“There is nothing illegal in this regard and the Public Ministry did not mention in the amended indictment any applicable law in this regard,” he said.

For his part, Jover filed three motions seeking the dismissal of various charges against him. “From the document, ASES received the services for which it negotiated and paid,” Jover’s motion said.

“The alleged distortion of the ‘relationship’ between IGS and the persons providing the services did not alter the negotiation itself when signing the contracts and did not mislead ASES in relation to IGS and did not alter the quality of the services provided,” he added.

In her case, the former director of ASES, Ángela Ávila, joined several motions of the co-defendants and filed an individual one, asking them to deal with the case separately, in order to “avoid it being tainted with prejudices and risks. guilt through association ”.