The Civil Guard detained Ernesto Quintero, 41, on Wednesday with the intention of urgently extraditing him to Venezuela. The Venezuelan citizen, a former employee of a Brokerage House in the Creole country, is in the Soto del Real prison, still stunned by the nightmare in which the Spanish authorities have plunged him. The lawyers have told us that right now there is no hope, that they are going to deport him to Venezuela in the first place. My husband is innocent, we have all the evidence, we demand an urgent review of his case,” Cismary Marcano told us.
The favorable position of the Prosecutor’s Office accompanied the ruling of the National High Court, which last year agreed to the deportation claimed by Chavismo. Quintero’s appeal was also not attended by the Spanish judicial authorities. The Council of Ministers finally decided to process the extradition despite the stance against the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which in its brief not only highlighted Quintero’s family roots but also reiterated its recommendation “of no return and the adequate assessment of their international protection needs, taking into account the humanitarian and security situation in Venezuela.
Quintero was denied asylum status for having a criminal record in his case.
The government decision has been taken despite the fact that the United Nations accuses the Bolivarian regime of practicing torture, extrajudicial executions, and sexual violations against those persecuted and detained. In Venezuela, there is not the slightest hint of judicial independence, quite the contrary: judges who obey orders from the Bolivarian leaders. What is most strange about the Quintero case is that he is an employee without any public projection when in Spain until now the extraditions of Chavismo heavyweights, such as Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, director of the Intelligence and Counterintelligence of Chavismo with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, and the famous nurse of the “supreme commander”, Claudia Diaz Guillen, involved in corrupt and millionaire plots.
Quintero worked as an administrator at ABA Mercado de Capitales, one of the brokerage houses intervened by Chávez in 2010. At that time its owners fled the country and were accused of defrauding more than 50 million dollars. But Quintero, for three years, worked with state auditors to clarify the case and was recognized for it. In 2013 he continued his work in another company but in 2015 the case was reopened, in which he was soon named as a scapegoat. His lawyers advised him to leave the country before the accusations of the revolutionary prosecution. In February 2019, Quintero was identified in the control of the Municipal Police, which discovered that he had a red notice from Interpol.
The Venezuelan took a year to prove his innocence to Interpol until in March of last year he was notified of his disincorporation from the red code. The process continued in the National Court with the result already known. “We only have him,” Marcano complained bitterly to this newspaper. Since her arrest, she has only been able to speak to her husband twice. “They have told us that they are treating him well,” he confirmed to the local news agency, an explanation that no one would give in Spain but that in Venezuela it is required after each arrest or imprisonment.
