BishopAccountability.org
	Costa Rican Convicted in Reporter Death Associated Press, carried in San Francisco Chronicle December 19, 2007 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/12/19/international/i202852S65.DTL&hw=catholic&sn=002&sc=988 A court convicted a businessman of ordering the 2001 murder of a journalist who denounced fraud at a religious radio station, but acquitted a priest of the killing. The businessman, Omar Chaves, was sentenced to 35 years for paying a gunman to kill Colombian-born journalist Parmenio Medina. The gunman, Luis Alberto Aguirre, got the same sentence. Chaves ran Radio Maria with Father Minor de Jesus Calvo, who was acquitted in the murder case but convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in jail. Chaves also got a 12-year prison sentence on the fraud count. Medina's reporting on the misuse of donations solicited by Calvo's radio station was believed to be the motive behind his killing. Medina, gunned down in his car on July 7, 2001 at age 62, ran a radio program called "La Patada," or "The Kick." Chaves and Calvo misappropriated millions of dollars in donations made to the station, instead of spending the money on charitable works as promised, the court found. The court's verdict called Calvo's conduct "especially reproachable, given that he is a Catholic priest." Calvo had been a popular and widely known religious broadcaster, but his handling of the radio station — which he had registered in his own name — upset church authorities, who ordered it shut down in June 2001 because of growing debts.
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