12 none of the victims had filed an appeal for legal protection, which, in the State’s opinion, is a "prompt, summary and effective remedy to argue the facts they alleged to have suffered”. Moreover, the State pointed out that it did timely argue the lack of exhaustion of domestic remedies "in the first answer forwarded to the Inter-American Commission, during the processing of this case", in a brief dated July 25, 2005.26 Moreover, the State pointed out that the requirement of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies, established in Article 46 of the American Convention, constitutes the main guarantee of the subsidiary nature of the Inter-American system and alleged that the Inter-American Commission has the responsibility and obligation to verify the compliance with all the procedural requirements, including the prior exhaustion of domestic remedies, before processing or consider certain petition, which in the State's opinion, the Commission failed to do. 40. The representatives sustained that the alleged violations contained in the application have been timely denounced and informed to the Public Prosecutors’ Office of Venezuela. The fact that the State admitted that the complaints are being processed constitutes an acceptance of the admissibility of the case inasmuch as six years have passed since the occurrence of the first events. Furthermore, they alleged that it applies, in this case, the exception to the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies for “unwarranted delay” in rendering a decision on said remedies and that such criterion has been adopted and applied to the Report on Admissibility N° 7/04 of the Inter-American Commission, in which it was also decided the dismissal of the State's argument according to which the alleged victims have not filed certain remedies for review. Furthermore, they asserted that the State organs would have explicitly closed some investigations already initiated, based on the ground of its own ineffectiveness to justify the abandonment of the alleged victims at the domestic level. They stated that the Public Prosecutors' Office is the only body in Venezuela capable of prosecuting a crime on an ex officio basis, and it is therefore entitled to conduct the necessary investigation and to determine the perpetrators of the illegal acts; however, the great majority of the cases are at the initial stage of the investigation and the only conclusive decisions would have been that of shelving the case and ordering the stay of the proceedings, without identifying the responsible. Lastly, they stressed that the procedural inactivity is evident and that the State has made a mistake regarding the role of the victim and the role of the Public Prosecutors' Office. 41. Moreover, the Commission sustained that the State, by not alleging the lack of exhaustion of the two remedies mentioned during the admissibility proceeding, impliedly waived its right to defense, and therefore, it is prevented from arguing this legal position for the first time in the response to the application, by virtue of the principle of estoppel. Furthermore, the Commission alleged that this issue was duly settled in the Report on Admissibility N° 7/04, which expressly refers to the lack of the answer from the State as to the admissibility of the complaint. The Commission considers that in such report, the application of the exception established in Article 46(2)(b) of the American Convention was properly weighted, in light of the elements contained in the case file; therefore a new discussion about this issue is irrelevant. It pointed out that the State did not allege that the decision on admissibility was based on mistaken information or that it would have been prevented from exercising its right to defense. The Commission considers that the content of the adopted decision on admissibility according to the rules established by the Commission and its Rules of Procedure should not be subjected to a new procedural examination before the Court. Lastly, the Commission asserted that the State's arguments do not constitute a preliminary objection, given the fact that the inefficacy of the 26 In the final written arguments, the State quotes, word for word, that in the Communications AGV N° 000680 of July 25, 2005, the State, inter alia, pointed out: “Therefore, currently, the 15° Plenipotentiary Public Prosecutor of the Office of the Prosecutors General is studying the records that form part of this case file in order to decide what considers best. […] The case is also at an investigative phase during which the practice of the following proceedings have been ordered […]”.