Supreme Court to rule on defense appeal in Odebrecht case

Panama’s  Supreme Court must resolve an appeal filed by the defense of Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares in which he requests that he be granted access to a copy of the denunciations made to the Public Ministry by collaborators and protected witnesses in the Odebrecht case reports La Prensa.

This is an appeal to the protection of constitutional guarantees presented by Carlos Carrillo, from the team of lawyers of former President Ricardo Martinelli, also investigated in the Odebrecht case.

The appeal came to the Court on  September 19, after the First Superior Court of Justice rejected the protection of constitutional guarantees, in which the lawyers of Luis Enrique Martinelli, alleged that his fundamental guarantees were violated by not giving him a copy of the denunciations that Odebrecht made to the prosecution.

The ruling of the First Court maintains that in this case the request was not presented by the defendant’s defense during the first hearing held last January.

In addition, it cites article 20 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which states that the Public Ministry will ensure the protection of witnesses, complainants, and collaborators.

The request for access to the denunciations made by the collaborators and protected witnesses of the prosecution was also presented by other lawyers of some of the defendants in the Odebrecht case, but Judge Baloisa Marquínez, who is handling the case, said that she would resolve this and other incidents after the culmination of the preliminary hearing on September 28.

In addition to determining whether or not to call the 49 defendants to trial, Judge Marquínez must resolve 15 incidents presented by the defense attorneys.

The Public Ministry alleges that the defendants participated in a broad scheme of corporations, through which they would have moved money from the payment of bribes by the Brazilian company.

Some jurists estimate that Judge Marquínez could take several months to qualify the charges presented by the prosecution due to the length of the file (2,755 volumes, with more than 1,100,000 pages).