Paraguay
Kattya González said the conviction of Hernán Rivas is not enough to repair the institutional damage
The former senator spoke out after the eight-year sentence against the former lawmaker in the case over his fake law degree. She also said her loss of seat was linked to the complaint she promoted in the case.
Former senator Kattya González said, according to ABC Color, that the eight-year prison sentence imposed on Hernán David Rivas Román does not compensate for the damage that, in her view, the former lawmaker caused to the republican system, although she considered that the ruling sends an important signal about the consequences of falsifying a degree to gain access to power.
According to that outlet, Rivas Román, former deputy, former senator and former head of the Jury of Magistrates’ Impeachment, was convicted by a trial court made up of María Fernanda García de Zúñiga, Juan Carlos Zárate Pastor and Yolanda Portillo, in the case over acts linked to his fake law degree in public institutions. The Prosecutor’s Office had requested a 12-year sentence.
González said the ruling could open the way to dismantling a scheme for selling degrees and questioned those who, according to her version, politically protected Rivas. She also thanked prosecutors and judges for moving forward in a case she described as serious for the country and for the justice system.
ABC Color added that, during the oral trial, the former senator testified as a witness and reaffirmed her position that the defendant’s law degree is fake. In that statement, she also directly linked her parliamentary removal to the political cost of having investigated the case together with deputy Raúl Benítez.
According to her testimony cited by the newspaper, González said she reached that conclusion after reviewing the background and stressed that her actions responded to civic duty and legality. She also said she had no personal issue with Rivas and did not even know him before his arrival in the Chamber of Deputies in 2020.
The former legislator insisted that the complaint against Rivas led to the loss of her seat, in reference to the process that ended with her removal from the Senate on February 14, 2024.
Sources
About this note. Written by El Notero with assistance from artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not do its own reporting on this event.
