60. It is evident to the Court that the petition submitted within the six months required by Article 46(1)(b) of the Convention related to the claim for damages in the administrative courts rather than to the criminal proceedings. Therefore, with regard to the alleged violations that were included in Admissibility Report No. 3/02 concerning facts related to the criminal proceedings, the Commission did not duly verify the admissibility requirement of Article 46(1)(b) of the Convention (supra para. 57). 61. Based on the foregoing, in the instant case, the Court finds that this preliminary objection is founded because, owing to the change in the initial purpose of the petition in the Admissibility Report and the Commission’s subsequent application of estoppel to the State’s arguments concerning admissibility requirements in its Report on Merits, the Commission neglected to verify the admissibility requirement established in Article 46(1)(b) of the Convention regarding the criminal proceedings. Consequently, the Court will not examine the said criminal proceedings. C. “Failure to exhaust domestic remedies” The arguments of the parties 62. The State filed the preliminary objection of failure to exhaust domestic remedies and indicated that “the claim filed by Mr. Grande in the administrative court cannot in any way be identified as a judicial remedy to be exhausted, insofar as it was used to seek compensation for alleged damage caused by his prosecution, rather than a modification of his situation in the criminal proceedings, which is the central purpose of the application in question.” In this regard, the State indicated several remedies available to contest the alleged judicial delay.18 The State also stressed that “Mr. Grande […] enjoyed legal counsel and therefore knew or should have known the remedies available to him,” and his claim for compensation was “rejected by the domestic courts in the understanding, inter alia, that these matters […] had not been disputed in a timely manner during the criminal proceedings.” In response to the Commission citing the principle of estoppel with regard to the State’s position in its first communication of December 1995 stating that the remedies had been exhausted, the State maintained that “this position referred exclusively to the specific violations indicated by the petitioner himself under Articles 8(2) and 10 of the Convention,” in relation to the administrative proceeding and not to the criminal proceedings. 63. Regarding this preliminary objection, the Commission indicated that “most of the arguments made by the State are time-barred.” The Commission underscored that, of the “six remedies mentioned by the State in its answering brief before the InterAmerican Court, only one – the appeal for the invalidation of the seizure of documents – was alleged at the admissibility stage before the Commission in support of the alleged failure to exhaust domestic remedies.”19 In addition, the Commission argued 18 Namely: (a) an appeal to invalidate the search and the seizure of documents in order to “contest his prosecution in the courts.” The State specified the scope of this remedy and cited articles 509, 512 and 513 of its Federal Code of Criminal Procedure in force at the time of the events; (b) an appeal against the order of pre-trial detention; (c) a request for a “prompt trial” in the face of an alleged delay in deciding some issues in the case; (d) a remedy of complaint for delay in justice based on articles 442, 14(2) and (3), 544 and 545 of the Code of Criminal Procedure; (e) a criminal complaint for the offense of delay in justice based on article 273 of the Criminal Code, and (f) an application for amparo (protection of constitutional rights) based on Article 14 of the Constitution arguing a violation of his right to work “owing to the alleged delay.” 19 The Commission added that “even with regard to the application for invalidation the State presented more specific arguments in its answering brief before the Court […]. For instance, before the Court, it gave 15