Martinelli family and friends head list of 59 bribery suspects

Many of the 59 people charged in the Blue Apple bribery case were part of the inner circle of former President Ricardo Martinelli or had strong ties to his administration including his wife Marta Linares and their two sons Ricardo and Luis Martinelli Linares  reports TVN..

 Also charged are fugitive   Adolfo “Chichi” De Obarrio , who was Martinelli’s personal secretary, and former Public Works ministers, Jaime Ford and Federico “Pepe” Suárez  and  Attorney Evelyn Vargas , who represented several Martinelli companies

 The former director of the National Assistance Program,(PAN) Giacomo Tamburrelli , businessman Juan Carlos Marciaga , and the former chairman of the Board of the Savings Bank, Riccardo Francolini, are also on the list.

Relatives of prominent figures have also been charged including   María Bagatela , mother of the former Minister of the Presidency Demetrio Papadimitriu, and Kristelle Getzler, wife of the former Minister of Finance, Frank De Lima.

Many of the accused have already been investigated for other high-profile cases such as the Odebrecht scandal, and the PAN case among others.

 In total, there are 50 people charged with money laundering, 10 for corruption, 1 for falsification of documents and 24 for illegal association to commit crimes.

 There are 59 defendants in total, some defendants face two or three crimes. Four people have not been able to be investigated, since they are outside the country, and extradition procedures are underway. Anticorrupción prosecutors  Aurelio Vásquez and Javier Cuadra, detailed, in a press conference, that the Public Ministry has sent the file to the Judicial Branch (Court 18) so that the call to trial l can be made

 In addition, they said that more than $35 million have been recovered, most of them through a collaboration agreement.