On August 6, 2026, the Court of First Instance of Curaçao fully acquitted a Chinese businessman who had spent nearly nine years as a suspect in the extensive criminal investigation known as Avior.
He had faced serious allegations, including money laundering, underground banking, providing financial services without a license and failure to comply with tax obligations. In the end, even the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested an acquittal because there was insufficient legal and convincing evidence to secure a conviction.
Legally, the matter is now settled.
But after almost nine years, there is another question that cannot simply be closed with the case file: who repairs the damage when someone spends a substantial part of his life under suspicion and the state ultimately cannot prove that he committed a crime?
Nine years is more than a case number
There should be no misunderstanding about the role of law enforcement. When authorities have serious indications that crimes may have been committed, they have a responsibility to investigate. Complex financial investigations can involve bank accounts, companies, international transactions, tax records and evidence from several jurisdictions. They take time.
An acquittal does not automatically mean that the investigation should never have taken place or that prosecutors acted unlawfully by opening it.
But that cannot become a blanket justification for allowing criminal proceedings to stretch on indefinitely.
Nine years is an extraordinary period in a person's life.
During those years, the individual is not merely a name in a criminal file. He remains a suspect in the eyes of the public. Business partners may become cautious. Banks may ask questions. Customers and suppliers may distance themselves. Assets can be seized. Business opportunities can disappear.
And while all of that is happening, there is uncertainty about something fundamental: whether the state will eventually ask a court to take away your freedom.
That is precisely why the right to a trial within a reasonable time is an essential component of the rule of law.
A justice system cannot focus exclusively on reaching the correct destination. It must also consider how long it takes to get there.
Acquittal must actually mean acquittal
The aftermath of Avior makes this discussion even more relevant.
A day after reports about the acquittal, the Public Prosecutor’s Office acknowledged that money seized in connection with the investigation still had to be returned and announced that a formal order for its return would be prepared.
That should force us to consider what an acquittal means in practice.
Once criminal proceedings have ended in a full acquittal, the machinery that was activated against the defendant should also be unwound as efficiently as possible. Seized money and property should not remain in bureaucratic limbo unnecessarily. Restrictions arising from the criminal proceedings should be reviewed immediately.
Otherwise, a strange situation emerges: the court says the state has not proven the person's guilt, while some of the consequences of being treated as a suspect continue.
The presumption of innocence matters here as well.
It is not merely a phrase used during a criminal trial. When a person has been acquitted, government institutions must be careful not to continue treating that person as though the allegations were nevertheless established facts.
The invisible sentence
There is another issue that deserves attention.
When someone is convicted, society can see the sentence: five years, ten years, a fine, community service or another punishment.
But what is the sentence for someone who is never convicted?
There is no official sentence, yet nine years under criminal suspicion can impose its own punishment.
The reputational damage does not automatically disappear when a judge says “acquitted.” Search engines do not forget nine years of headlines. People who heard about the arrest or investigation may never hear about the final judgment. Business opportunities lost years earlier cannot necessarily be recovered. Personal stress cannot be refunded.
That does not mean every acquitted defendant should automatically receive compensation. Nor should fear of compensation prevent prosecutors from pursuing difficult cases.
It does mean that our legal system should have credible mechanisms for examining whether an exceptionally lengthy prosecution caused unreasonable and demonstrable harm.
The state has enormous power
There is an unavoidable imbalance in every criminal prosecution.
The state has investigators, prosecutors, legal authority and coercive powers. It can search premises, seize property, freeze assets and bring criminal charges.
Those powers are necessary.
But precisely because they are so extensive, they must be accompanied by equally serious safeguards.
The question should therefore not only be whether authorities were legally entitled to begin an investigation. We should also ask whether cases are being managed efficiently, whether delays remain justified, whether seizures continue to be necessary and whether somebody is actively responsible for preventing a complicated investigation from simply becoming an endless one.
Nine years should make us uncomfortable, regardless of who the defendant is.
A lesson for Curaçao
The Avior case should not become an excuse for attacking the police, prosecutors or judiciary. That would miss the larger point.
Instead, Curaçao should use it to ask difficult institutional questions.
How long should a major financial investigation reasonably take? At what point should delays trigger additional judicial or administrative scrutiny? Who monitors cases that have remained unresolved for years? How quickly must seized assets be returned after an acquittal? And when an exceptionally long criminal process causes demonstrable financial damage, is the existing route for seeking compensation adequate and accessible?
These are not questions designed to weaken law enforcement.
They are questions that strengthen the rule of law.
A mature justice system must be capable of doing two things simultaneously: aggressively investigating serious crime and aggressively protecting the rights of people whose guilt has not been established.
One principle cannot exist at the expense of the other.
Justice has a human cost
Perhaps the most important lesson from Avior is that justice cannot be measured solely by the final verdict.
A person was suspected of serious crimes. The authorities investigated. The case continued for almost nine years. Ultimately, the evidence was insufficient, the prosecution itself sought an acquittal and the court acquitted him.
That is how the legal system is supposed to work when guilt cannot be proven.
But we should not pretend that the final judgment magically erases everything that came before it.
A court can end a prosecution. It cannot return nine years.
And that is why the strength of a constitutional democracy is measured not only by how effectively it punishes the guilty, but also by how carefully it treats those whose guilt it ultimately cannot prove.
After nine years, “not guilty” should not simply be the end of the court case.
It should also be the beginning of an honest examination of what the process cost — and whether our justice system can do better next time.