New York (AFP) – Alvin Hellerstein, the 92-year-old US judge handling the case against deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, has presided over a number of notable trials during his decades on the bench. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, made their first appearance in Hellerstein’s Manhattan courtroom on Monday, pleading not guilty to narco-terrorism and other charges. Maduro was indicted in 2020 in a sprawling drug trafficking case that has been before Hellerstein for nearly 15 years and has already seen the conviction of Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, Hugo Armando Carvajal.
A graduate of Columbia University law school, Hellerstein served as a lawyer in the US Army from 1957 to 1960 before entering private practice. He was nominated by former president Bill Clinton in 1998 to be a district court judge for the Southern District of New York.
During his lengthy career, Hellerstein has presided over several civil cases stemming from the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. He has also tangled at times with Donald Trump, rejecting a request by the president to have his New York hush money case moved to federal court. Hellerstein also blocked the Trump administration last year from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without a court hearing.
In September, he sentenced tech start-up highflier Charlie Javice to more than seven years in prison after she was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase on a $175 million deal. In another high-profile fraud case, Hellerstein sentenced Bill Hwang, the founder of US investment firm Archegos Capital Management, to 18 years in prison.
He also presided over the trial last year in which a jury found French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan had helped prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, awarding $20.75 million in damages to three plaintiffs from Sudan. In a noteworthy 2015 ruling, Hellerstein ordered the US government to release a trove of photos depicting abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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