VPs brother linked to Odebrecht, Martinelli sons

THE BROTHER of Panama  Vice- president and Chancellor Isabel de Saint Malo is the latest high profile insider to be fingered in the country’s  ongoing corruption scandals.

Raúl de Saint Malo was part of a  money-laundering scheme linked to the sons of ex-president Ricardo Martinelli. according to Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor Tania Sterling.

De Saint Malo,  under investigation for banking transactions used to pay bribes of Odebrecht, must explain to the public prosecutor the origin of the monies coming from the account Petro Trading Services, company. in which he split shares with Ricardo and Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares. The Public Ministry presumes that the last two received more than $50 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, reports La Estrella de Panama.

The inquiries suggest that $ 7.1 million was used in business with De Saint Malo for the purchase of tankers for fuel bunkering.

Raúl de Saint Malo, a shareholder of Star Tankers, approached  Ricardo Martinelli Linares an acquaintance from his student days at the University of Georgetown, Washington, to propose buying tankers to transport fuel. De Saint Malo had met with the Jamaica Petrojam refinery, which had alerted him about the expiration of a transport contract it had with a Greek company and the opportunity to win contracts on the island was open.

Martinelli immediately said that Global Bank,  in which his family had shares, would finance the project.

Fast-tracking
De Saint Malo found ships in Europe but at payment time   Martinelli said that the bank was not able to disburse the money on time, so they would buy the boats with their money and then the bank would release the loan and the debt would be repaid. The amount of $ 17million was for three ships.  When De Saint Malo arrived in Germany, the vendors asked him to fast-track the funds.

Martinelli’s attorney gave him the account number and De Saint Malo noticed that the money came from the Stonewood And Partners Corp. account in the Winterbotham Merchant Bank in the Bahamas. De Saint Malo asked Martinelli for the swift code for buyers to track the funds. Mauricio Cort, the lawyer of the  Martinelli sons, told him that it was delayed because he had to move money between several accounts to collect the whole and send it to the vendor.

The ships were purchased, and registered in Panama The prosecutor says that the banking movements referred to by Cort came from an account of a bank in  Andorra fed by transfers from the Kienfeld and Aeong Group companies, controlled by the Odebrecht “Office of Structured Operations,” with which bribery payments were made to politicians.  De Saint Malo said that he had no idea where the money in  the Bahamas came from.