Ex-president  Varela speaks out on Odebrecht with former team members

Former President, Juan Carlos Varela (2014-2019), on Wednesday, October 12, met with members of his former work team at the Golden Unicorn restaurant and said that, unlike other defendants, he went to testify in his time for the Odebrecht case.

“I am here [in Panama] and I have answered everything,” he said, referring to the seven occasions that he went to the Public Ministry.

He assured said that “by law” he became a deputy of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), for which he maintains that the jurisdiction to carry out the process would not correspond to the Third Liquidator Court, in charge of Baloisa Marquínez.

“There is no such parliamentary immunity, what exists is a definition of competence. The legal team helps protect the process in this instance, because if it is not in the jurisdiction of the current court, that puts what has been done at risk,” Varela said.

During the recent hearing, the defense of former president Varela denied that his client has any relationship with the bribes distributed by Odebrecht and that he does not know who corresponds to the pseudonym Cachaza with which the former president is allegedly identified in the Drousys system, used by the construction company to pay bribes.

His defense also argued that his client is a deputy, and therefore the Supreme Court is the only one competent to investigate him and not the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

Luis Hincapié, Mario Etchelecu, Dulcidio De La Guardia, Iván Zarak, José Luis Varela, Eyda Varela de Chinchilla, Álvaro Alemán, Jonathan Del Rosario, and Eduardo Carles attended the meeting.