No room for delays in Odebrecht case

The revelations and convictions of the Martinelli Linares brothers for their participation in the Odebrecht case in the United States, focus attention and deepen expectations about what will happen in Panama, on Monday when the preliminary hearing begins, in which two former presidents appear, Ricardo Martinelli and Juan Carlos Varela reports TVN.

Former Attorney General, Ana Matilde Gómez, has said that the things on the road that have been clarified in other latitudes, allow us to demand forceful action from Panamanian justice because one can no longer speak of political persecution in the Odebrecht case, one cannot talk about campaign donations or persecution to prevent them from participating in the next election.

“The truth has already been forceful in other countries where there were convictions, but there is another even stronger one, which is the confession of the children of former President Martinelli regarding the corruption plot that constituted Odebrecht,” said Gómez, noting that these facts impose justice and the judge of the case “an overwhelming force that is the truth”.

She recalled that when Odebrecht arrived in Panama, in the government of Martín Torrijos, he realized the opportunity because there were light officials for easy money, but in the Martinelli government, this overflowed because each contracted public work became a screen to get easy money that comes out of the budget we all pay with taxes.

Collaboration agreements
She said that the file is complete, it has strong evidentiary elements such as effective collaboration agreements with people within the process who made known how the corruption plot took place, people who quickly admitted their guilt, confessed who participated and went on to serve their sentence.

“This is a very complex case, which is well prepared and the crime is proven and that is what the judge is going to qualify in the preliminary phase,” she said.

Regarding the investigations being carried out against the Martinelli Linares brothers, who are serving sentences in the US for the same case, Gómez said that the mechanisms used in the corruption plot could generate countless crimes in different modalities and that The Public Ministry may reveal

The expectation is focused on how what was said in the US will be used in the investigation in Panama.

The fact that the relatives do not enter the Panamanian process, there are sufficient merits to call a trial and convict all the people that the Public Ministry could link , even those who have been provisionally dismissed.

“It is a double standard to call one a donation and call another corruption. It may be a different criminal modality, somewhere I heard the lawyer say that he was not a public servant, but for money laundering, you do not need to be a public servant”.

For the Gomez, many Panamanians are understanding the relationship between taxes-budgets-payment of public works, which was not understood before, but it is already understood that when the State pays a contractor it does not pay out of the Presidents’ pockets and when bribes are paid It is the same money with which the work is paid, the money is within the surcharge.“All those who received payment from Odebrecht are criminals, no matter how they want to disguise themselves. In the Odebrecht case, what happened with public money cannot be forgotten,” she said.

Closing-off impunity
Gomez said there is enormous pressure on the justice system and high demand for results because the only ‘salvation’ is to close the space for impunity because we are the only country that has not visibly had forceful action by Justice.

She said there is no room for more delays, justice has a weight on its shoulders to rescue the credibility of the system to close the spaces of impunity.