MEXICO CITY – Defense attorney Luis Germán Cruz Gómez presented a complaint before the Attorney General’s Office against Germán Efromovich, owner of the airlines Avianca and Taca, for alleged “planting” of drugs.
…”The owner of this airline is the owner of Synergy Group, his name is Germán Efromovich and he is a Bolivian national naturalized as a Colombian-Brazilian, and the strangest thing is that this is the business that has gown the most, in less than 5 years, with 129 airplanes”…
According to the lawyer, these two airlines have reported the most cases of drug trafficking between South America and Mexico.
…”From 2009 until now, Avianca and Taca are the two groups of airlines that have brought the most drug problems, form bringing them aboard their airplane, to it being carried by their personnel, from pilots to flight attendants, with money in cash and sometimes in dollars, and of course drugs within bags or carried by people on board hiding it within their stomachs or in the overhead compartments”…
Luis Germán Cruz Gómez is the defence attorney of Venezuelan university professors Alexandra María Colmenares Ávila and Claudio Enrique Contreras Ochotegui, who arrived at Mexico City International Airport (AICM) from Caracas last November the 20th to spend the holidays.
According to the lawyer of both Venezuelans, they were detained by customs personnel accusing them of carrying drugs in their bags, which the academics deny and for which they are being processed for “crimes against public health”
…”Their legal situation comes first, they were sentenced to imprisonment with the information given by customs, which say they do not have the customs ticket that specified what the bags carried and, furthermore, the customs officers have not appeared to ratify their statement and now we are waiting until they show up. As is unfortunately common in Mexico, these statements are made, crimes are manufactured, and the people who detained them never reappear in a case where it’s obvious the accused didn’t do it”…added Luis Germán Cruz Gómez.”
The lawyer added that his clients had their basic rights violated, being interrogated for over four hours, in a process full of irregularities from the moment of their detention, for which he calls on attorney general Arely Gómez to act.
Interviewed outside the offices of the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), the lawyer declared that in the AICM there exists a systematic, total and absolute discrimination against citizens of Venezuelan and Colombian origin.
He stated that from 2005 until now, 150 cases of “planting” in the luggage of passengers have occurred in these airlines (Avianca y Taca).
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