“Incapacitated” Martinelli sounds off on corruption probe

Former President Ricardo Martinelli has twice presented medical certificates -one for 60 days-  to avoid questioning by prosecutors investigating the Odebrecht bribery scandal while he was in office and on a third-occasion accepted Article 25 of the Constitution, which exempts him from testifying against himself.

While hiding behind his incapacities he has been active in presenting denunciations against others pursuing the formation of a new political party, meeting with supporters and lawyers, and visiting the Electoral Tribunal. where on Thursday he took time to rail against prosecutors and told waiting for journalists he has asked the Public Ministry to summon “all the people” linked to the  Odebrechtbribery file, “so that Panamanians know the whole truth.” Martinelli has also challenged the prosecutor  and Tania Sterling claimed that she cannot investigate because – according to him – it is prevented by the principle of specialty contemplated in the extradition treaty agreed between Panama and the United States. (The US State Department and the US Embassy in Panama have said that the specialty principle no longer applies to Martinelli.)

The former president has also filed two criminal complaints against Sterling claiming $10 million in damages; a complaint to the Attorney General Eduardo Ulloa, and a warning of unconstitutionality against her actions.

Martinelli also insists that his sons Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares were coming to Panama “to cooperate with the justice system” when they were arrested at the La Aurora airport in Guatemala, at the request of the United States, to face charges of alleged money laundering.

“My children came without any impediment to come to Panama, to cooperate with justice in a case invented, fabricated, by [forme attorney General] Kenia Porcell, and [ex-president] Juan Carlos Varela,

The Martinelli Linares brothers have remained outside of Panama for at least the last five years, and before their arrest, ignored summonses to be investigated in the Odebrecht and Blue Apple cases.

Martinelli said s that the extradition process of his children “has not even begun”, although the United States has already formalized its extradition requests and the reasons that support them. Meanwhile, they remain in a military prison.

According to the FBI would have participated as “intermediaries” in the receipt and payment of bribes for $28 million from Odebrecht.

The payments – as stated in the sealed indictment that is in a New York court – would have benefited a Panamanian official who was a  close relative, with a very high position in the government of Panama” between 2009 and 2014 when Martinell ruled/,

Although they have never answered the questions of the prosecution, Martinelli insists: “we want to get to the bottom … to know what happened.”

“I urge the prosecutors and the Office of the Attorney General to end this case, and put all the people, especially the Panamanistas, who have not come to testify, there are even other Democratic Change who have not come to testify and must include them so that Panamanians let us know the whole truth and not just a part of the truth, which was the one manufactured by Kenia Porcell and Juan Carlos Varela ”, he said

Varela (2014-2019) attended the investigation of the Odebrecht case, in July.