The expert in charge of valuing the luxury wines stolen from the Atrio de Cáceres restaurant has assured during the second session of the trial that the 45 bottles stolen would have a market price of just over 750,000 euros, compared to the price of 1.6 million euros that the owners of the establishment jointly attributed to him in the letter.
The industrial technical engineer Roberto Nebreda Pineda, who has defined himself as an expert in appraisals for insurance companies, has not been able to answer the defense questions of the two defendants about how he had carried out the valuation and about his knowledge of wines stolen.
The president of the court, magistrate Joaquín González Casso, has interrupted and closed the interrogation: "The expert does not have to know about wine or like wine."
During the second session of the trial for the robbery that is being held at the Provincial Court of Cáceres, allegedly perpetrated on October 27, 2021 by the 49-year-old Romanian-Dutch citizen, Constantin Dumitru, and his partner, a 28-year-old former Mexican miss named Priscila Guevara, the expert has faced questions about, for example, what was the grape that predominated in the Chateau d'Yquem of 1806 —with a price on the menu of 150,000 euros— or in other high-end wines, such as the 38 bottles of Romanée Conti, which were also stolen.
The questions to the expert who has evaluated the stolen wines, and whose report has led the insurer Reale Seguros to disburse 753,454 euros to the owners of the Atrio hotel-restaurant as compensation, have continued aimed at assessing the existing security measures in the establishment.
But the president of the court, again, has considered the questions “impertinent” and “irrelevant”.
The expert is defined in his Linkedin profile as "specialized in fires and various risks."
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The owner of Atrio does not recognize "one hundred percent" the alleged thieves of the bottles of wine valued at 1.6 million
The Atrio cameras are the ones that collected the images that collect the perpetrators of the robbery, in black and white and with poor quality.
José Polo himself,
sommelier
and one of the owners of the premises along with chef Toño Pérez, acknowledged on the last day of the trial that, after the robbery, they had proceeded to change the security cameras for "others of the latest generation."
The videos have not been projected at trial as documentary evidence due to technical problems.
For their part, the Scientific Police agents who have appeared at the hearing have explained that genetic material was found in the toilet in room 107 of Atrio that is compatible with that of the two defendants, and with that of "a third person unknown”.
And they have assured that the image of the Swiss identity card, allegedly used by Guevara, with the name of Mirka Golubic, to register at the hotel, "is not of sufficient quality to make any judgment."
The two defendants have been in provisional prison "due to flight risk" who were detained in a vehicle when they tried to cross the border between Slovenia and Croatia on July 19.
The trial continues in the absence of the parties' conclusions.
Constantín Dumitru and Priscila Guevara sit on the bench under charges of robbery with force aggravated by the high value of the wines, for which five years in prison are requested for them.
The defender has remarked that her clients consider themselves innocent and that "they do not have the bottles."
The Atrio warehouse, where the stolen bottles were.
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