OIJ Pays Informants, Court  Heard Yesterday
Need a little extra cash? Well, it was heard in open court yesterday that the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), the judicial investigative body has a special fund to pay informants, like in the case of John Gilberto Gutiérrez, who is one of the accused for the murder of journalist Parmenio Medina.

Court heard how the OIJ paid Mata Vega for information related to a group of Guatemalans who were to come to Costa Rica for the purposes of committing a number of crimes, including the murder of Parmenio.

At the end, this group never came to Costa Rica.

Miriam Bedolla, lawyer for Gutiérrez, a Colombian national, opened the can of worms telling the court how her client was a paid information for the OIJ, providing police information between 2000 and 2001, a period when the murder of Parmenio was allegedly in the planning stage.

"I do not really know what is the motivation of informants if they are being paid of just want to eliminate competition", stated Bedolla, who added that the OIJ has a special fund to pay informants, though she did not specify an amount of the fund or what the Poder Judicial pays to each informant.

Bedolla told the court that the OIJ knew ahead of time that the her client earned a living through extortion, but it is unclear why he was never detained for those crimes, when they knew that he was committing the crimes.