A court in Limón ordered the release of the wife of extradited trafficking suspect Edwin López Vega today, rejecting a prosecution request to hold her for a year in preventive detention and imposing lesser restrictions instead. Prosecutors have appealed the ruling and the woman, identified by the surnames Smith de la O, is under investigation on suspicion of money laundering and unlawful association.
She has not been tried, and the accusations against her remain allegations to be established in court. The Deputy Prosecutor’s Office against Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture had asked the Limón penal court for a year of preventive detention. The court declined and set lesser conditions.
Under the terms imposed, she must sign in every 15 days, surrender her passport and is not allowed to leave the country. Her defense lawyer, Andy Jack Sánchez, confirmed the conditions after being notified of the resolution this morning. The Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had appealed the decision and would renew its request for preventive detention at a new hearing.
Accounts of how she came into custody differ. Authorities said she was detained on Sunday, August 30, by professional migration police at Juan SantamarÃa International Airport as she entered the country on a flight from Switzerland, acting on an outstanding international arrest alert. Her lawyer said she returned that afternoon and presented herself to authorities.
An Interpol alert had been active against her since June 23, the day investigators executed the raids in the case known to police as Riverside. Migration records incorporated into the file show she left Costa Rica on June 17, six days before those raids, travelling with another defendant surnamed Mulins, a Swiss national who remains at large. She was absent from the country for 74 days.
The Riverside operation involved roughly 1,500 officers and about 146 searches of homes, restaurants, farms, hotels, guesthouses, a quarry, a gym and a bullring, among other assets attributed to López Vega and his alleged associates. It has been described as the largest single action against drug trafficking carried out in Costa Rica. Investigators say the organization operated from Limón and maintained international connections for moving cocaine and marijuana. The file names more than 50 other defendants, among them four of López Vega’s children.
In the investigative file compiled by the Judicial Investigation Organization, the OIJ, Smith de la O appears under the contact name Tóxica J in López Vega’s phone. Investigators allege she handled bank deposits and transfers and moved and administered funds connected to him, and that she appears in several companies that hold his assets.
The OIJ describes the pattern as consistent with arrangements in which leaders of criminal structures share control of resources with their partners. Those are investigative conclusions, and the case file states they must still be determined within the judicial process.
The couple married on February 17 at the La Reforma prison in San Rafael de Alajuela, where López Vega was held in maximum security, according to records of the Supreme Elections Tribunal. He was extradited to the United States on March 20 to face charges related to international drug trafficking, roughly a month after the wedding.
Smith de la O is a resident of Cahuita, the Caribbean coastal town that was among the areas most heavily affected by the June raids. Her detention on Sunday closed one of the gaps left when several suspects left the country shortly before the operation began. No date has been set for the appeal hearing. Until it is heard, the restrictions imposed on Tuesday stand.
