"No double jeopardy  for Martinelli siblings” – prosecutor

With the request for a summons to trial for former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), his children, former Ministers of State, and collaborators, the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office concluded its allegations phase. The preliminary hearing resumes on Thursday when the defense arguments will be heard.

When presenting Martinelli’s connection with the collection of bribes, coming from the ‘”black box” that was later transferred to their companies and personal accounts, the Anticorruption prosecutor, Ruth Morcillo, stressed that the biggest lobbyists of the former president were his children and former ministers.

In the midst of her arguments,  the prosecutor clarified that there is no double trial in the case of the Martinelli-Linares brothers,  who were convicted in the United States.

“It is not about the same facts or the same crimes recorded in the Odebrecht Panama case,” Morcillo clarified while bringing up that in this case, the defense of the Martinellis alleged from the day the sentence was handed down the possible violation of a constitutional guarantee contained in the country’s Constitution regarding double jeopardy.

“The violation of the constitutional guarantee of double jeopardy should not be considered and you will see why we maintain that this is not the case. The money laundering scheme that is going to be presented is different from the facts for which they were convicted in the US.”

Morcillo, made a series of clarifications regarding the opposition briefs presented before Judge Baloisa Marquínez.

Morcillo denied that the investigation carried out so far by the Public Ministry is biased as has been insinuated because the Prosecutor’s Office has a thorough analysis of the accounts that supports the traceability of how it entered, how it came out, how it was received and how the illicit proceeds of the Odebrecht corruption plot were transferred and integrated.

“It would be naive to think that a money laundering investigation is not carried out with a team of auditors and financial analysts. So, saying through some opposition briefs that the investigation carried out at this time is biased -because we do not have the analysis of the accounts- is information that has no basis “, she affirmed.

She recalled that in the file there is a preliminary report carried out by the Division of Crimes Against the Public Administration, which in 2016 was commissioned for that function.

She said that the final report on the traceability of the bribes will be incorporated into the file at the corresponding evidentiary stage, as indicated by the Court, by virtue of the fact that it was received after the tax hearing.

“Because it all illicit [money]… here at this point, we can no longer talk about legal money coming in from somewhere, all the money in Odebrecht’s pay boxes is illicit.”.

Finally, the Anticorruption prosecutor refuted the fact that when the file cannot be attacked, the investiture of the judge or the prosecutor is attacked, for which she asked the parties participating in the trial to limit themselves to speaking of law.

These projects were distributed “as if they were colored pencils and the former had a specific function: to solve the company’s problems in exchange for a cost, which came from ‘box 2’ of the company.