Former DMG executive and lawyer Margarita Pabon broke her silence Wednesday to comment that her upcoming extradition to the U.S. to face money laundering charges is “unfair.”
Pabon said she had collaborated extensively with Colombian prosecutors, and disagreed with the Colombian Supreme Court’s decision that she should be tried by a New York judge.
The Barranquilla lawyer, along with DMG associate Daniel Angel Rueda, struck a deal with prosecutors that they would receive diminished sentences in Colombia, in exchange for collaboration with justice.
The two executives were sentenced to more than four years in jail and a fine of $90,000 for money laundering.
The Supreme Court denied a request for Rueda’s extradition.
“They are two identical requests, from the same sentencing body and same American indictment. I don’t understand why they denied Daniel’s extradition and not mine,” Pabon told media.
Pabon asked Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to revise and not sign the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The money launderer’s lawyers will appeal the court’s decision, based on the fact that Pabon had been sentenced in Colombia for money laundering before the U.S. requested her extradition.
Pabon’s husband, Luis Fernando Cediel, was extradited to the U.S. in October last year on the same charges that his wife now faces. Pabon says that her extradition would orphan their 9 and 12-year-old daughters.
Pabon was the lawyer of extradited DMG boss David Murcia, and was in charge of the finances of the company.
According to Colombian authorities, DMG was a pyramid scheme that laundered money for local drug lords. Murcia always defended his business as legitimate, and claims that he is being persecuted in order to defend the interests of established Colombian banks.
Murcia has reportedly become a business guru for fellow inmates in his U.S. prison.
Hundreds of thousands of Colombian lost their savings when police shut down all activities of the company late 2008. Most of the money that had been “invested” in DMG is still missing.