It has been more than two months since Ana María Knezevich disappeared in Madrid. The Spanish justice system is investigating it as a possible case of sexist violence, at the same time that a court in Florida (USA) focuses on her husband’s apparent liquidation of her assets that they both shared.
The investigations by the National Police to find the whereabouts of the 40-year-old American woman, who disappeared on February 2 in Madrid, are being directed by the Court of Violence against Women number 9 of the capital, which keeps the case under summary secrecy. .
However, the complaint that a friend of hers filed three days after losing contact with her initially fell to the Investigative Court number 51, which ended up being inhibited a few weeks ago in the one specialized in sexist violence.
This fact implies, as legal sources have told Efe, that investigators have as one of their hypotheses that her husband, David Knezevich, with whom she had been immersed in a divorce process for half a year, could be involved in her disappearance.
The relatives of the missing woman, represented in Spain by lawyer Juan Manuel Medina, are already appearing as a private prosecutor in the case after the Spanish consulate in Miami granted them power of attorney for lawsuits, but they have not yet been able to learn the details of the investigation that is in the power of the Court.
FBI agents collaborated from the beginning in the investigations and it is expected that in the coming days, with the cooperation of the company that rented the home where Ana María resided, they will receive the personal belongings she had in Madrid.
It will be mainly to deliver them to their relatives, residents in Florida, although the sources consulted do not rule out analyzing them previously to try to obtain new clues about their whereabouts.
It is precisely a court in Broward County, in the southern US state, that is evaluating the request for Juan Felipe Henao, Ana María’s brother, to be appointed as manager of her estate, which includes properties valued at several million dollars and two companies – a real estate company and a technology company – that she shared with her husband.
This is because they suspect that David, who they believe is in Serbia, his native country, has been liquidating the assets shared with the missing woman.
According to the aforementioned sources, at the beginning of the year Ana María told a close friend that she had reached an agreement with David to divide her assets equally after the divorce.
However, relatives allege that at that same time he sold several properties and apparently kept the profits, so they fear that he could continue carrying out actions of this type.
The US court has not yet made a decision about granting this measure to her brother, who claims that this will allow him to safeguard the missing woman’s assets.
In addition, they have proposed that Medina, a collaborator of the SOS Desaparecidos Association and who has been advising the family since the woman’s disappearance, testify before the aforementioned court as a lawyer in the criminal case in Spain.
Ana María, of Colombian origin and 40 years old, arrived in Madrid last December looking to rest from a complex divorce process that caused depression for which her doctor in the United States prescribed medication.
The last news that her loved ones had about her was that she was looking for a new rental apartment with the expectation of staying in the Spanish capital long-term. A day later, on February 3, two friends received messages from her that made them suspect that something was wrong.
In them, one written in English and the other in Spanish and both with expressions inappropriate for the missing woman, she told them that she had met a person and that at that time they were traveling to a place two hours from Madrid where she would barely have coverage.
The lawyer considers that these types of messages are a “relatively hackneyed” procedure that attempts to “erase a person’s tracks and pretend that it is a voluntary escape.”
