The former Venezuelan vice minister Nervis Villalobos has decided not to answer the judge’s questions this Friday in the so-called 'Leire Díez case', in which he appears as under investigation for an alleged documentary falsification to obtain Spanish nationality.
According to legal sources consulted by Europa Press, the former senior official in Hugo Chávez’s government has exercised his right not to testify before the National High Court.
Judge Santiago Pedraz had summoned him and had required him to hand over the original documentation that he included in the nationality file processed under the Democratic Memory Law, specifically "birth certificates and passport of his grandmother of Spanish nationality".
In a brief submitted this same week, Villalobos explained to Pedraz that the documentation that accompanied his application for Spanish nationality "was submitted in person and on paper to the Central Civil Registry", and therefore indicated that it will have to be "this administration" that "provides the required documentation", since he maintains that he does not have those papers.
For this reason, he requested that, until that documentation was located and incorporated into the case, his appearance be postponed. The judge, however, denied the request for suspension.
The defense had already warned that, if Pedraz did not agree to delay the statement, Villalobos "will avail himself of his right not to testify", although it made clear his "wish to do so once he has been able to fully know the elements on which the investigation is based".
For this same Friday, a official from the Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts allegedly linked to the process of granting Spanish nationality to Villalobos has also been called to testify as a witness.
Last Wednesday, another senior Justice official testified as a witness that he did not detect anomalies in the granting of nationality to Villalobos under the so-called 'law of the grandchildren', the provision of the rule that allows descendants of exiles to access Spanish nationality.
Sources close to Villalobos’s defense told this news agency that the former vice minister has nothing to hide, maintaining that it was an ordinary procedure in accordance with the law and that this will be proven in the case.