A Québécois wants to avoid his trial at the Texas

News 17 March, 2018
  • Éric Thibault

    Friday, 16 march, 2018 23:33

    UPDATE
    Friday, 16 march, 2018 23:33

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    A Montreal pinned in an international investigation of money laundering of narcodollars tries desperately to avoid his trial in Texas.

    Edgar Belapatino, 46 years old, has convinced the Québec Court of appeal to release him on remand under severe conditions, the last week, waiting for the highest court of the province decides its own fate.

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    Edgar Belapatino
    Accused

    Native to Peru, the accused, who describes himself as a ” consultant in international affairs “, had been imprisoned at the prison of Rivière-des-Prairies after the federal minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, had authorized his extradition before the american justice. It is challenging this decision.

    The loot confiscated

    In 2013, the american investigators of Homeland Security have intercepted e-mails between Belapatino and a lawyer in Panama who is suspected of creating companies, fictitious in this tax haven in order to hide the millions of dollars of drug traffickers.

    According to court documents which The Newspaper had access, the suspects would have tried to launder a $ 245,000 as a suspect drug-dealer had collected by the sale of cocaine.

    Belapatino instructed an accomplice montreal to go to Chicago to take delivery of the loot and transport it to New York. There, he was to deliver the suitcase full of money to another accomplice of Belapatino working in the financial world.

    But the mail has been intercepted just before you get to your destination and the police seized his fortune in Manhattan.

    Double Agents

    Subsequently, Belapatino has been trapped by the double agents came to the meet in Montreal by pretending to be potential customers. He would have admitted that a $ 245,000 seized in New York belonged ” to a drug cartel in Mexico.”

    Last week, judge Patrick Healy was released upon $ 20,000 bail, with the obligation to go and live with his ex-spouse to abide by a curfew.

    Three times per week, the accused must present themselves to the offices of the royal canadian mounted police of Canada, Dorval, to sign a registry. His passport was withdrawn.

    Edgar Belapatino has been sentenced to three years in prison, in 2008 in Montreal, for having attempted to illegally enter the country with a hundred immigrants, peruvians, and mexicans.