In her Listin Diario column today, Ana Mitila Lora demands an explanation from the Supreme Court of Justice on why Judge Anikssa Serra de la Mota was transferred to the remote border province of Elias Pina. She also asks why Serra?s court, the Sexto Juzgado de Instruccion, was dismantled on Friday, 30 July. The secretary of the court, who had been at her post for 12 years, complained that she was ejected without conducting an inventory of the cases being heard.
Lora says that the SCJ has the right to submit members of the judiciary to disciplinary hearings penalize them accordingly, but it must advise them of their transgression. A transfer such as Serra?s is often interpreted as a punishment or way of motivating that person to resign.
Lora reminds us that Serra had been in charge of the Bancredito case since January, and that it was she who ordered the arrest of banker Manuel Arturo Pellerano in April after he ignored her summons. The judge was also preparing the case filed by multimillionaire Luis Alvarez Renta against a law firm in Miami that had been hired by the Central Bank to investigate the Baninter case in the US. She explained that Alvarez Renta sought legal action after the president of the Civil and Commercial Court of the National District, Robert Placencia, had ordered that the commission to liquidate Baninter?s assets overrule the judicial actions begun in the US. The columnist says that two days before the order for her transfer was given, Judge Serra had summoned Alvarez Renta to present her court with the arguments that sustained his case.