VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Homicide investigators are taking precautions on fears that a wealthy/corrupt property developer may trick his way out of prison by making a fake appeal to judges that he has a health condition that prevents him from remaining in police custody. 58-year-old Manuel Arturo Andrade Duarte could easily buy his way to freedom, and we have information that he has a private jet standing by to whisk him away to Trinidad on the first leg of an international escape plan.
Already on March 15 -- just four days after 53-year-old Swiss-Venezuelan housing inspector Maria Clelia Spinas Dora was brutally slaughtered by knife-wielding assassins in her apartment in Puerto La Cruz on Venezuela's eastern Caribbean coast -- VHeadline fearlessly named Manuel Andrade as a mastermind of the crime ... Clelia had got too close for comfort to questionable transactions entered into by executives at the Anzoategui branch of Banco Guayana and super-rich Manuel Andrade.
Andrade Duarte was captured in a residence in the Nazareno residential area of El Tigre (southern Anzoategui State) on Sunday evening by Puerto La Cruz CICPC Chief of Detectives Roger Mendez. His 37-yearold son Manuel Alfredo Rojas Bravo was captured after he drove his Chevrolet Tahoe almost into the entrance of Anzoategui State Police Area 5 Command HQ after a violent pursuit. The arrests came after a month-long investigation by CICPC detectives who were able to establish that two men arrested last Friday had been paid Bs.F 20,000 (US$9,300) to kill Maria Clelia Spinas Dora in the brutal attack. They were named as Luis Alberto Guerra Rodriguez (21) and Fernando Antonio Pelaez Navarrete (32). A third suspect, Jhon Gonzalez Prado (34) was shot dead on March 29 (also in El Tigre) following an unrelated altercation.
At a press conference in Puerto La Crux, CICPC Commissioner Alfredo Montero said that Manuel Arturo Andrade Duarte and Manuel Alfredo Rojas Bravo had clearly been identified as the masterminds of the assassination of Maria Clelia Spinas Dora and that they had paid Bs.F 20,000 for killing. The public prosecutor says formal charges will be laid within the next 30 days and has requested that the accused be held in custody pending trial. Andrade and his son are described on the charge sheet as being the owners of 2M Construction and 2000 AZ C.A, property developers. Commissioner Montero explained that Andrade Duarte and Rojas Bravo had planned the death of the Ministry of Habitat & Housing Inspector because she had discovered irregularities in the execution of public works and repair of roads. She had dedicated her life to researching government work contracts and had discovered a number of anomalies (acts of corruption) that made her an obstacle to "certain interests." In the end she had shown that Andrade has cheekily charged local authorities some Bs.F 5 million and had falsified documents presented to a local branch of Banco Guayana on which her signature had been forged.
A close friend of Maria Clelia Spinas Dora said, only 15 days before her death, that she was receiving death threats, but that she did not wish to take any such threats seriously.
Montero said detectives had recovered the knife used to kill the Housing Inspector in her apartment and also found a cellular telephone used by the killers to communicate with Andrade and Rojas after the deed was done. Investigations are on-going and Montero does NOT rule out that a number of other arrests may be made within the next few days.
Rojas and Andrade were represented in court by defense lawyers Luis Guillermo Alvarez, Amparo Sosa and Barbara Nunez. In a preliminary examination, yesterday, 3rd District prosecutor Rosa Perez has asked 5th Control Court Judge Eloina Brito Ramos to decide whether or not the defendants may be held in custody pending trial under Article 12 of the Organic Law Against Organized Crime. A formal decision was adjourned until today, Tuesday!
Clelia Spinas was born in Switzerland. She was raised in Venezuela, and decided to become a naturalized Venezuelan citizen. She was married and had three children. She was committed to working for the positive development of Venezuela and had a reputation for honesty and and determination. She had been employed by the Ministry of Habitat & Housing to inspect infrastructure project constructions of El Tigre where she began to realize that there were many inconsistencies in projects involving a contractor by the name of Manuel Andrade.
VHeadline Venezuela News
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