Juan Carlos Gonzales Infante, a 61-year-old Venezuelan national, who was acquitted of money laundering charges in Cayman in 2019, has been in a Northward prison cell for four-and-a-half years following repeated delays in his extradition case, the Grand Court heard on Friday.
Gonzales-Infante is fighting against efforts to extradite him to the United States, which has a warrant for his arrest on drug and money laundering charges.
After he was found not guilty of the local charges, linked to a gold smuggling allegation, in March 2022, he was remanded in custody because the US extradition warrant was active.
On Friday, the court had expected to receive an update on when medical reports on Gonzales-Infante would be available, but his lawyer Jonathon Hughes said those reports were not ready because Legal Aid had deferred a decision on paying for them, on the basis that similar reports had been prepared a year earlier.
Hughes said doctors at Northward Prison, where Gonzalez-Infante is being held, were of the view that his client’s mental state had deteriorated significantly and the effects of his Parkinson’s disease had grown since the reports were previously done.
A Grand Court mention date has been set for 10 Nov., and the official hearing of the extradition appeal was set for 24 Jan. next year, but both Crown and defence counsel, as well as Justice Richards, expressed concerns that the case may not be able to go ahead as planned on those dates, as the lack of the necessary reports would cause knock-on delays.
Hughes said nothing could progress until the Legal Aid issue was resolved, noting that the request had not been refused – rather, a decision on it had been deferred, meaning counsel could not challenge it. “We’re in a holding pattern until a decision is made, one way or the other,” he said.
Four and a half years in prison
Prosecutor Toyin Salako told Justice Richards that the delays in the case were becoming an embarrassment for Cayman, pointing out that Gonzalez-Infante had been in custody awaiting a decision on his extradition for “1,288 days, which equates to three years, six months and 10 days”.
Prior to that, he had spent another year on remand awaiting the outcome of the gold smuggling charges. He had been the co-pilot on a private jet that landed in Cayman in May 2019 with $6 million worth of gold on board, which local authorities claimed were the proceeds of crime. He and four other men were charged with and later acquitted of money laundering in connection with that gold.
Gonzalez-Infante, appearing via video link from Northward prison on Friday, asked for permission to address the court.
He told the judge that he had been “detained and restrained almost five years, which has led to a deterioration in my mental health, my physical health, and even with my whole life. My family, everybody, has been affected by the inordinate delays in these proceedings.”
He was first arrested in Cayman on the gold smuggling charges in May 2019, and was served with the provisional US arrest warrant in November that year.
“I want to express my deepest concern over the manipulation and the long delays surrounding this case,” he said.
“My representative has been struggling to get extra evidence in support of my defence. My evidence was sent to Legal Aid and to my representative on two occasions, the first one on 18 Dec. 2021, and the second one on 22 July 2022.”
Referring to a hearing before Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale, who is now chief justice, in September 2021, in which he appealed against Legal Aid’s refusal to pay for a King’s Counsel to represent him, Gonzalez-Infante said, “Legal Aid has been disregarding and ignoring the ruling of the Grand Court. That is unacceptable.”
He added, “I don’t want this proceeding to be delayed anymore”, and he invoked the right to a fair trial under Cayman’s Constitution and the UK’s Human Rights Act.
Gonzalez-Infante is appealing a decision by Summary Court Magistrate Kirsty-Ann Gunn, following a hearing in November 2022, to extradite him to the US.
Salako urged Justice Richards to reach out to the Legal Aid department to stress the urgency of this matter being dealt with as soon as possible.
Salako asked the court on Friday, “How do we keep telling our partners that if you seek extradition from here, you’ve got a three-year-plus wait?”
Richards agreed that the Legal Aid director, Stacy Parke, needed to be informed of the urgency of the case, and asked Hughes to write to her and “formally advise her that the submission date of today has had to be missed because we are awaiting a response, and say to her that the next date for mention is 14 November”.
She added that she was also going to request the court’s case management officer write to the Legal Aid director “to ask for an indication as to when a decision may be made in respect of this matter and to say the court is enquiring because the hearing date is likely in jeopardy if these issues are not resolved sooner rather than later.”
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