MESA, Ariz. -- Cubs president Theo Epstein continued to strongly support closer Carlos Marmol amid a civil suit in the Dominican Republic alleging a domestic assault incident in October.

Epstein also said the club had no knowledge of the allegations when it came close to trading Marmol to the Los Angeles Angels in November. ``We became aware of it when there became media reports [in the past two weeks],'' he said.

On Friday, the case against Marmol was sent to the high court in the Dominican. Marmol's attorneys, meanwhile, have filed a countersuit claiming extortion and blackmail by the 24-year-old accuser.

Marmol was expected to arrive in Phoenix Sunday night.

Epstein said that after investigating, the team believes in Marmol's innocence.

``I think it's the organization's responsibility to take all accusations of that nature very seriously. Any incident like that, especially if it involves a woman, you have to take it extremely seriously,'' he said. ``So it was our decision to look into it a little bit. We don't have necessarily all the information; obviously, we weren't there. But every piece of information that we were able to gather backs up Carlos' story that he's guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever and may in fact be a victim here if this case continues to be pursued like this.

``All we can do is evaluate it on the merits, and so far what we've seen backs Carlos' story, and we're going to continue to support him,'' Epstein added. ``And we expect this matter will be behind us shortly, based on the way it's proceeding in the Dominican courts.''