The Prosecutor's Office raided this Friday a luxurious home in Asunción owned by Dalia López, the fugitive businesswoman who brought Ronaldinho Gaúcho and her brother to Paraguay, imprisoned for a week for entering with false passports in the South American country.
The Public Ministry this week pointed to López as the alleged head of a network dedicated to “facilitating the preparation and use of false identity documents and passports.” This is part of the open investigation after Ronaldinho and Roberto de Assis Moreira entered Paraguay on March 4, through the Asunción International Airport.
López was the president of the Angelic Fraternity Foundation, which the next day was going to present a free healthcare program for children in Paraguay, which was to be supported by the former Brazilian international.
Prosecutors, along with personnel from the National Police, proceeded to search two properties of López this morning, one of them in the exclusive Asuncan neighborhood of Carmelitas. In this procedure, electronic equipment and a large amount of documentation were seized that would shed more light on the investigation, Federico Delfino, one of the prosecutors in the case, told reporters. The House, In which several soccer balls with the face of Ronaldinho were also found, it could also have served as the office of López's company, supposedly dedicated to organizing air freight.
López is declared in absentia and charged with an alleged crime of production and use of public documents with false content.
Days ago, the Paraguayan Executive eliminated the legal status of the López foundation that Ronaldinho was going to promote with his presence. The Prosecutor's Office points out that López was in charge of processing the false documents used by the two brothers, which he would have delivered to them in Brazil, weeks before they took the flight to Asunción.
However, his lawyers maintain that López entrusted the processing of these documents to private managers in the Identification Department of the National Police, and that he is not responsible for the resulting falsifications.
So far there are 14 accused in the case, which in addition to officials from the Identification Department splashes the Migration Directorate and the authority of the Asunción International Airport.
One week imprisoned
Ronaldinho and his brother will celebrate tonight their seventh day of internment in the Specialized Association, a police headquarters that works as a prison and where he has received visits from several retired Paraguayan soccer players.
The former international Nelson Cuevas, a football globetrotter, with stops in Mexico (Puebla) or Spain (Albacete), told Efe that Ronaldinho maintains the same activity as the rest of the inmates and that he saw him “well”. “He has the right to go for a walk, he is sharing with all the people in there. In that he has no problems (…) We talked for a while, in general terms it is fine, but you have to fight it in such a difficult situation”, Cuevas said.
The two brothers are charged with an alleged crime of using false content public documents, with the expectation of a penalty of up to five years in prison.
His lawyers presented an appeal document Thursday to the preventive prison ratified on Tuesday by a Paraguayan judge, who opposed the request for an outpatient release or house arrest, alleging danger of flight.
The appeal appeals that “the legal assumptions are not given” so that the two brothers remain in prison and demand that the criminal resolution be revoked as “arbitrary, illegitimate and unfounded.”
The defense of the former player maintains that those documents were a gift to which the two brothers did not give greater importance. Both were interested in establishing businesses in Paraguay, according to their lawyers.