Rodriguez Sentenced to 5 Years

Former President Miguel Angel Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison for his part in the tangled web of corruption that surrounded the granting of 400,000 GSM cell phone lines to the French company Alcatel by the then-telecommunications monopoly ICE in 1998.

He is one of nine defendants in a case that heard the testimony of nearly 100 witnesses, reviewed a mountain of evidence and took more than a year for the three-judge panel to process.

Of the nine, only former ICE functionary Rodrigo Mendez was declared innocent due to a lack of evidence. Of the remainder, Edgar Valverde received the highest sentence (20 years in prison), followed by Guido Sibaja with 15 and Alfonso Guardia with 10.

Eliseo Vargas received two years for his role as "corruptor", as did Eduardo Fonseca. Joaquin Fernandez was sentenced to five years and Luis Quiros to 18 months.

Chief Judge Rosaura Garcia read the sentence as the defendants sat, trying to achieve expressionless faces. Rodriguez appeared to have aged considerably since he was originally charged.

Most of the defendants are prohibited from leaving the country because, before they are jailed, an appellate court must review their sentences. Most were also prohibited from holding public posts, Rodriguez for 12 years.

When public prosecutors announced the charges against Rodriguez, the public erupted in anger. They had already been battered by the charging of former President Rafael Angel Calderon on criminal corruption charges connected with a purchase of equipment for the Social Security Adminiustration (Caja) through the private drug firm Fischel.

(Calderon was sentenced last year but the appellate court still has not presented its findings. A judge on the panel resigned "for personal reasons" a short time before the court was to report either confirming the sentence or reducing it.)

Rodriguez, at the time the charges were brought, was occupying an important international position, President of the OAS. He resigned and returned to this country voluntarily. At the airport, he was met with OIJ detectives and walked down the airliner steps handcuffed, in front of TV cameras, then carted off in a "perrera"(literally dog kennel in English, or a paddy wagon).

A crowd of angry citizens made it difficult for the police van to enter the court complex, angrily pounding the van's sides and shouting insults. The ex-president remained bitter about this "perp walk" but apparently OIJ intended to demonstrate that even high executives receive the same treatment as common criminals when arrested.

The complete, detailed sentence will be released May 25. In the preliminary findings, the judges dealt with defense maneuvers one by one, giving reasons for accepting or rejecting them. One striking aspect of this reading was a detailed rebuttal of defense allegations that the case was based on political considerations.

Also noted was the defense attempt to quash evidence obtained from foreign banks, a strategy with which they began the trail and ended their side 10 days ago. The panel rejected the ploy.