Cases against Martinelli sons move to Supreme Court      

The cases against the brothers Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares, sons of former president Ricardo Martinelli, will be elevated to the jurisdiction of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court (CSJ), the Judicial Branch announced on Tuesday.

The Martinelli Linares brothers were sworn in, virtually on August 16, , as substitute deputies of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).

The brothers, both in the Odebrecht and New Business cases, will leave the sphere of ordinary justice since only the Court can judge the deputies and vice versa.

In addition to this decision, the entity reported that the Second Liquidation Court of Criminal Cases of the First Judicial Circuit of Panama determined not to carry out the ordinary hearing for this case, scheduled to begin on September 27, because they are still in the stage of admissibility of evidence, which will be used during the trial of 25 citizens for the alleged commission of the crimes of money laundering and corruption of public servants.

In this process, the intervening parties have presented 36 briefs in which a series of testimonial, documentary, expert and report evidence is provided, and more than 100 witnesses have been adduced. The investigation, which has 2,829 volumes, began with a complaint filed on September 18, 2015. At the same time, the court continues to reproduce more than one million pages of the file to send it to the Plenary Session of the CSJ.