OPINI0N: 50 years jail vs impunity

The new criminal charges that prosecutors have made in the United States against two of the sons of former President Ricardo Martinelli – who are in Guatemala waiting for the extradition process to continue to the United States – reveal the seriousness of their legal situation in that country, where they would face penalties that can add up to 50 years in prison. And everything is related to the investigation, which for years has been the Odebrecht case. The contrasts between American justice and ours are embarrassing. While in the United States it advances with firm steps –as in other Latin American countries–, in Panama everything indicates that the theft of state funds will go unpunished since in the Supreme Court of Justice a conspiracy is woven to make the case suffer the luck of all high-profile processes: impunity. Here, the investigation has irrefutable recordings, documents, confessions, and evidence against the accused –evidence as solid as in the United States–, but the fate of the cases in both countries will be very different. And that is known by the parents of the extraditable, who desperately want them to return to the country, because here the most petulant corruption reigns, whose inseparable companion is, precisely, impunity.- LA PRENSA, Jul 29