Attorney Alvaro Noboa left the country in a legal manner, yesterday, with his passport stamped by Migrations and under the auspices of a ruling by Judge Ivonne Hernández, from the Special Judicial Unit No. 4 for the Family, Women, Child and Adolescent of Guayaquil, that lifted the order of detention.
So it was confirmed this morning in a press conference by Dr. Sylka Sánchez, lawyer for the Noboa companies, who recalled that Judge Hernández allowed the action of habeas corpus presented by Álvaro Noboa, and stipulated via the role as Provincial head of Migration that the physical and electronic record of the prohibition to leave the country against the aforementioned businessman be expunged.
The detention order was issued last September 23 by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for a presumed tax debt from 2005, which was described by Noboa as political persecution against him, given that the mentioned organization is attempting to demand close to $99 million dollars for that year from Exportadora Bananera Noboa with sales less than that of Dole, a multi-national company that paid $700,000 in that same year.
Dr. Sánchez stated that she personally took the sentence to Migrations and in that office, before the IRS lawyers, the Migration authorities wrote out and emitted the lifting of the prohibition. “I immediately called attorney Noboa and I told him that he could leave the country in a legal manner,” she affirmed.
Sylka Sánchez insisted that the debt that the IRS is attempting to impose against Bananera Noboa does not exist and that it will be fought in the Court of Justice, via a exception decision, for which the IRS can not carry out an auction of embargoed goods, whose value is above the amount of $100 million dollars that they are trying to collect illegally.
She stated that in the last few days IRS director, Carlos Marx Carrasco, publicly recognized that the embargoed goods were greater than the value of the amount of the debt, and although according to Bananera Noboa the debt is illegal, upon the existence of the support of the embargos, a prohibition against Álvaro Noboa’s leaving the country was unjustified.
Nevertheless, the IRS emitted a new order for detention, dated March 19, which has no legal value because of the existence of the sentencing by Judge Hernández on March 20, and no other legal action can be above the sentencing.
Sylka Sánchez stated that all this indicates that there is political persecution against Álvaro Noboa, and she denounced the intervention of the Government in the judicial function, given that, once more, the IRS has intervened, soliciting sanctions against Judge Hernández for breach of public duty, just as they brought against Judge Augusto Posligua, who paid with a sentence of 8 months in prison for having given Noboa Constitutional protection.
She emphasized that despite the prohibition against leaving the country, raised when Álvaro Noboa was abroad, he returned, participated in the electoral campaign, and yesterday, after the sentencing by Judge Hernández that revoked the detention order, he left the country in a legal manner, with his passport stamped by Ecuadorian Migrations.
Finally, Sylka Sánchez stated that she did not know the reasons for which Álvaro Noboa had left the country, and assured listeners that he was abroad, and that he would soon give details in a press conference.