MIAMI (AP) - Former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina and his wife were acquitted Tuesday of all charges following a federal trial on accusations they filed false tax returns and lied to federal agents.
Jurors reached the not guilty verdicts for Julio and Raiza Robaina after about six hours of deliberations.
Prosecutors claimed the couple failed to report about $2 million in income between 2005 and 2010. Some of it was cash payments on high-interest personal loans they made to friends and associates, including a convicted Ponzi schemer.
Testifying for the couple, Raiza Robaina blamed many of the problems on mistakes by the couple’s accountant. She insisted they did not submit false tax returns or lie to investigators, and their lawyer said the federal case rested heavily on testimony of the jewelry investment Ponzi scheme operator, Luis Felipe Perez.
It should have been handled through an Internal Revenue Service audit rather than a criminal indictment, defense attorney David Garvin said in closing arguments.
“Each and every one of these issues should have been in the civil audit that never occurred,” he said.
Jurors left the courthouse without commenting to reporters. Julio Robaina told reporters outside the courthouse that he never doubted the outcome.
“I told all of you from the beginning that we were going to vindicate our name,” he said. “The truth is the truth.”
Asked about her testimony, Raiza Robaina said, “I told the truth, and there is nothing else.”
Julio Robaina, 49, was mayor of heavily Cuban-American Hialeah from 2005 to 2011 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Miami-Dade County. For a time Robaina was also president of the Florida League of Cities. Raiza Robaina, 40, handled much of the couple’s business affairs and was her husband’s campaign treasurer three times.
The couple was accused of hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable compensation - including a Ferrari sports car worth $176,000 - and money from high-interest personal loans to friends and associates. The interest rate on some loans topped out at 36 percent annually.
Prosecutors also said they used three shell companies that did almost no business to claim thousands of dollars in tax deductions that were actually their own personal and political expenses - including cuff links and cigar boxes the mayor doled out as gifts and printing of his Christmas cards.
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