the start of the administrative investigation or offered them the opportunity to prepare their defense during the investigation. 121. The representative referred, in general, to the considerations of the Inter-American Commission. He merely listed the articles of the American Convention that had supposedly been violated, including Article 8(1) and (2) and Article 25. In this regard, he did not present specific arguments, but reproduced extracts from the Commission’s Admissibility and Merits Reports and from the letter submitting the case. 122. The State did not refer specifically to the Commission’s allegations. In general, it argued that the presumed victims had been heard at each procedural stage and that, throughout the criminal proceedings, the judicial authorities had observed due process. It also argued that the presumed victims were able to submit the arguments, evidence and remedies they considered pertinent throughout the proceedings. In addition, it reiterated that the presumed victims had obtained some favorable judicial decisions. A.1.2. Right to a competent, impartial and independent judge or court, presumption of innocence, and duty to provide a statement of reasons 123. The Commission argued that, as president of the NPCJ, Byron Pinto Muñoz exercised substantive powers in the proceedings, including with regard to decisions concerning personal liberty. The Commission considered that, given the numerous indications of the lack of competence of Mr. Pinto Muñoz, the State was unable to offer a convincing explanation of the reasons why this person was competent pursuant to domestic law. 133 Therefore, it considered that the State had violated the right to a competent authority in accordance with legally established procedures, recognized in Article 8(1) of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument. 124. Moreover, with regard to the composition of the NPCJ, the Commission underscored that, considering that it exercised judicial functions of a punitive nature with the power to impose punishments of deprivation of liberty, the lack of legal education of all the members, their direct appointment by the President of the Republic, and a limited two-year mandate with the possibility of re-election, meant that the said organ did not offer sufficient guarantees of impartiality and independence, in violation of the judicial guarantees established in Article 8(1) of the Convention. 125. Lastly, regarding the second composition of the NPCJ134 presided by Mr. Pinto Muñoz, it emphasized that the conviction of Alfonso Vinueza Pánchez, Jorge Coloma Gaibor and Jorge Villarroel Merino for the offense of misappropriation of funds was issued despite the existence of numerous exculpatory elements that included the different reports of the prosecution concluding that there was no evidence on which to charge the presumed victims. Thus, by convicting the presumed victims, the presumption of innocence and the duty to provide a statement of reasons for decisions were violated. It also argued that although the report of the Comptroller’s Office indicated that the acts that the presumed victims had allegedly committed were defined as embezzlement, the president of the NPCJ issued an order to initiate a trial for the offense of misappropriation of funds. The latter was defined in the Criminal Code of the National Police. According to the Code, the NPCJ was the court responsible for trying function-related acts of the members of that institution. The Commission also noted that the presumed victims were police officers at the time of the facts and that the presumed wrongful acts had been committed in the context of their functions in the National Police of Ecuador. 133 The Commission indicated that, based on the proven facts, during the police criminal proceedings against the presumed victims, the NPCJ had three different compositions: “(i) the one presided by [MAD] who began hearing the case; (ii) the one presided by Byron Pinto Muñoz who ordered the detention of the presumed victims and issued the judgment convicting them, and (iii) the new composition that decided the acquittal. These changes in composition were based on the decisions issued by two Presidents of the Republic in 2003 and 2005, respectively.” 134 32