Miami media heat for absconding Martinelli

WEALTHY politicians and businessmen suspected of corruption in their native lands are fleeing to a safe haven where their wealth and influence shield them from arrest reports the Miami Herald.

“They have entered the country on a variety of visas, including one designed to encourage investment. Some have applied for asylum, which is intended to protect people fleeing oppression and political persecution.

“The increasingly popular destination for people avoiding criminal charges is no pariah nation.

It’s the United States.” writes the Herald

The paper topped the story on Dec.9 with a photograph of ex-president Ricardo Martinelli

An investigation by ProPublica, in conjunction with the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, has revealed that officials fleeing prosecution in Colombia, China, South Korea, Bolivia and Panama have found refuge for themselves and their wealth in this country, taking advantage of lax enforcement of U.S. laws and gaps in immigration and financial regulations.

Many have concealed their assets and real estate purchases by creating trusts and limited liability companies in the names of lawyers and relatives.

American authorities are supposed to vet visa applicants to make sure they are not under active investigation on criminal charges. But the ProPublica examination shows that this requirement has been routinely ignored.

One of the most prominent cases involves a former president of Panama, who was allowed to enter the United States just days after his country’s Supreme Court opened an investigation into charges that he had helped embezzle $45 million from a government school lunch program.

Ricardo Martinelli, a billionaire supermarket magnate, had been on the State Department’s radar since he was elected in 2009.

The dark side
That year, the U.S. ambassador to Panama began sending diplomatic cables warning about the president’s “dark side,” including his links to corruption and his request for U.S. support for wiretapping his opponents.

Soon after Martinelli left office in 2014, Panamanian prosecutors conducted a widely publicized investigation of corruption in the school lunch program, and in mid-January 2015, forwarded their findings to the country’s Supreme Court.

On Jan. 28, 2015, just hours before the Supreme Court announced a formal probe into the charges, Martinelli boarded a private plane, flew to Guatemala City for a meeting and then entered the United States on a visitor visa. “Within weeks, he was living comfortably in the Atlantis, a luxury condominium on Miami’s swanky Brickell Avenue. He is still here,” says the Herald

The State Department declined to comment on Martinelli’s case, saying visa records are confidential and it is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection that decides who is allowed to enter the country.

CBP said privacy regulations prevent the agency from commenting on Martinelli.

Efforts to reach Martinelli, including a registered letter sent to his Miami address, were unsuccessful.

In September this year, Panama asked to extradite Martinelli, but the former president is fighting that request, arguing there are no legal grounds to bring him back to his home country, where the investigation has broadened to include insider trading, corruption and abuse of authority.

Last December, Panama’s high court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges that he used public funds to spy on over 150 political opponents. If found guilty, he could face up to 21 years in jail.

Rogelio Cruz, who is defending Martinelli in Panama’s Supreme Court, said the former president “will return to Panama once adequate conditions exist with respect to due process, where there are independent judges — which there aren’t.”

The United States has explicit policies that bar issuing visas to foreign officials facing criminal charges in their homelands.

In 2004, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation designed to keep the United States from becoming a haven for corrupt officials. Proclamation 7750, which has the force and effect of law, directed the State Department to ban officials who have accepted bribes or misappropriated public funds when their actions have “serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.”

In 2014, the U.S. banned visas for 10 members of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s inner circle because of corruption allegations.

But numerous other foreign government officials, including former presidents and cabinet ministers, have slipped through the cracks, according to court documents, diplomatic cables and interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys in the United States and abroad.