Judge asked assistant to perjure herself

A suspended judge who lost documents related to a high profile criminal investigation with possible links to Ricardo Martinelli boasted of packing his office with relatives and tried to get his associating to give false testimony. said a witness at his trial on Thursday, November 22.

Walkiria Boya Casasola, judicial secretary of the Seventh Criminal Court, testified that Felipe  Fuentes named three relatives in the court and boasted that authorities would never realize it because they have different surnames.

In addition,  said the witness that he gave permission to officials to work from home, and he coerced his assistant to change her version of the alleged theft of part of the record of a proceeding related to the defunct brokerage  Financial Pacific (FP).

Boya said that after the Public Ministry raided the court and detected that the file was missing, Fuentes coerced his assistant, Karina Martinez, to say that she, by mistake, put the booklets in a yellow envelope.

Boya testified under oath in proceeding against Fuentes for the alleged commission of crimes against the public faith, after the alleged removal of notebooks from the FP file, which were later found by a man on a Panama highway. -Arraiján, in Loma Cová.

Fuentes accepted that he named family members, but reiterated that his assistant put the booklets in the envelope, which she confused with documents of a thesis that he was preparing

Boya testified for over three hours at the hearing of  Fuentes, for the allege subtraction of booklets from the High Spirit account file. The account in the now defunct Financial Pacific brokerage reportedly belonged to then-President Ricardo Martinelli. and was used to manipulate the stock market in the US and Canada.

Coercion
She also testified that the judge coerced his assistant, Karina Martínez, to give a version that would favor him in relation to the booklets of the Financial Pacific case file by saying in her testimony that she had put the booklets in a yellow envelope that she placed in his office. Martinez refused to give that version.

Fuentes wanted her to support the excuse he gave to the magistrates of the Second Tribunal, that he took the file to his house because he confused it with a yellow envelope in which he kept documents of his master’s thesis.

The hearing continues .  A disciplinary process has begun in the Judicial Branch, whose results are still unknown.