Parents of ex-minister hid $16 million in Andorra

The parents of Jimmy Papadimitriu, Minister of the Presidency of Panama during the presidency of Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), moved $16 million to banking entities in Andorra.

Details of the money laundering and tax evasion scam between 2010 and 2014  were published in The Spanish newspaper El País on Wednesday, February  7.

The information is based on a report of The Financial Intelligence Unit of Andorra, a small state in the Pyrenees with about 78,000 inhabitants.

The former Minister is under investigation in Panama for allegedly receiving bribes from the Odebrecht construction company.

His parents had 45 accounts in the Private Banking of Andorra and the Crèdit Andorrà, two entities from  Andorra that in recent years had come under fire because it did not provide financial information to other states.

According to El País, the ex-ministers parents moved  several million dollars from different construction companies,

Among them, Panacol Construction Company of Panama which contributed $5 million to the Papadimitriu in December 2012, while they also transferred funds to their accounts from companies such as the Constructora Meco, the Constructora Internacional del Sur, Inversiones del Cono Sur, Meinl Bank and Monterde NG Power.

El Pais notes that the father of the former minister, now deceased, controlled up to 133 Panamanian companies.

In the Odebrecht case, Papadimitriou was preventively detained last year but. following a Supreme Court ruling which resolved a habeas corpus presented by his legal team, he has the impediment of leaving the country without judicial authorization and the obligation to report every 15 days.