A search for justice or political persecution?

THEY HAVE their (well paid) job to do, but some of the defense attorneys in the multiplicity of cases surrounding the National Assistance Program (PAN), seem to be grasping at straws as they try to deflect charges away from their clients.

In the early days of the investigations “political persecution” was the phrase regularly bandied about by the King of Tweets.

Now lawyers are seeking other avenues.
Edna Ramos, attorney for Adolfo De Obarrio, the former private secretary of Ricardo Martinelli. has asked prosecutors to cancel all the investigations being carried out into the purchase of dehydrated food with funds from PAN.
De Obarrio whose early idea of clearing his name as the messenger between his boss and two different directors of the PAN was to call a press conference and then, on December 25 Day last year, flee the country, in his rush to get to the airport not wasting time opening Christmas presents.
He will be remembered as the young man who, on a $5,000 a month salary while working for the president, had a wedding party reported to have cost $700,000.
Fifteenth Criminal Judge Leslie Loaiza denied the petition. A press release from the court made it clear that Ramos was not representing the others accused in the case.
The judge also rejected a second claim by Ramos, namely that the charges against her client should be dismissed because she was not allowed to participate in the proceedings with other suspects in the case.
The investigation is focused on a $44.9 million contract PAN issued to Lerkshore International Ltd. for the purchase of dehydrated food. There are eight others charged in the case.
Also charged is Martinelli, who is being investigated by the Supreme Court while his team of lawyers work out ways to block the hearing of the former head of state who headed to Miami in January and is now said to be working on his memoirs.
Of the gang of nine, only one, Guardia Jaen, who in two years, stashed away $18 million in local and foreign bank accounts and built himself a mansion in Costs Del Este, appears to have shown any signs of contrition, and has been cooperating with prosecutors as they attempt to follow the threads leading to the theft of money from a fund intended to help the least privileged in Panama society.
There is universal disgust at the amounts that have allegedly been pocketed by those with access to the trough.
The money could have gone to hundreds of schools in disrepair, to the CSS hospitals and Hospital Santo Tomas that are in crisis, or to a hundred other needs of the have-nots in a country with the largest per capita income in Latin America.
A speaker in a conversation I heard recently opined that stealing from a bank would be forgivable as many banks make vast amounts of money “stealing” from their clients when not busy in the laundry room processing money from drug cartels or aiding billionaire tax dodgers. Stealing from the lowest rungs of society is unforgivable, and hunting down the perpetrators is far from “political persecution. It’s called “justice”
Meanwhile, whether their clients are found guilty or not, a whole raft of defense lawyers will see their bank balances expand, as they struggle to find ways of avoiding the consequences of organized plundering. Pirates of the Caribbean were hanged for less.
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