16 Art. 237. Should the Public Prosecution Service fail to issue its ruling within the deadline specified in Art. 235 of this Code, the judge shall immediately impose a fine on it […] for the delay, he shall notify the corresponding Collections Office to enforce it, and the receipt issued by that Office shall be included in the proceedings. In the same order, the judge shall grant the Public Prosecution Service a further unextendable period of six days, at the end of which, should no ruling have been issued, the proceedings shall continue with the Public Prosecution Service in contempt. 62. In this way, the intermediate phase was regulated by a deadline of six days both for the ruling from the Public Prosecution Service (supra) and for the response of the accused, and the CCP allowed for the possibility of reopening the investigation for a period of ten days: Art. 238. With the formalization of the charges or the prosecutor’s ruling, or both, if applicable, the accused shall be given a period of six days in which to respond, with the warning that should be fail to do so, the proceedings shall continue with him in contempt. If there are no formal charges and no prosecutor’s ruling, the judge shall make himself available to hear the accused’s defense counsel during a period of six days. Art. 239. With the reply of the accused’s counsel or with the accused in contempt, the judge shall issue a ruling to dismiss or to open the plenary phase, as applicable. If he notes that procedural formalities that he deems essential have not been carried out, he shall order the investigation reopened for a period of ten days for those formalities to be performed. Art. 240. If the accuser, the Public Prosecution Service, or the defense counsel of the accused, upon application of the provisions of Arts. 235 and 238 of this Code, as applicable, see that essential procedural formalities have been omitted, they may ask the judge to reopen the investigation for those formalities to be performed, for the same period of time as indicated in the previous article. 63. Once the intermediate phase is concluded, the judge, if he finds that the existence of the crime and an assumption of the accused’s guilt have been established, shall issue a deed calling for the 90 plenary phase to begin. Article 254 of the CCP stated: Art. 254. If, when the declaration of commencement of the investigation phase is issued, the accused is a fugitive from justice, the judge shall, after issuing said declaration, order the suspension of the investigation phase until such time as the accused is apprehended or presents himself voluntarily. […] 64. In addition, Article 101 of the Ecuadorian Criminal Code addressed the application of statutory limitations and established the following rules: In both publicly actionable crimes and privately brought actions, the first determination shall be, once the crime is established, whether prosecution has or has not begun. With the exception of the cases of actions and punishments to which statutory limitations do not apply specified in the final section of Article 23.2 and in the second section of Article 121 of the Constitution of the Republic, in all other publicly actionable offenses punishable by imprisonment, if no sentence is handed down, statutory limitations shall apply after ten years; for offenses punishable by special lengthier periods of imprisonment, statutory limitations shall apply after fifteen years. In offenses punishable by minor jail terms, statutory limitations shall apply after five years. These periods shall begin to run on the date on which the offense was committed. 90 Article 253 of the CCP stated: If the judge finds that the existence of the crime has been established and that, in addition, there are indications that the accused is the perpetrator, accomplice, or accessory after the fact of that crime, he shall issue a deed declaring the plenary phase open and shall order the accused to name defense counsel, within a period of two days.