Video shows Martinelli meeting with husband of trial judge
On the morning of December 15th, social networks lit up after a video published by the online source, Foco Panamá, has caused various reactions after showing former president Ricardo Martinelli, meeting with a close relative of one of the judges who acquitted him in the wiretapping case. The video shows former president Ricardo Martinelli with Ricardo Ramírez, husband of Judge Marisol Osorio, one of the three judges who participated in the same case where Martinelli was declared not guilty. “This is a convenient coincidence, given the day, before Ricardo Martinelli announced that he would not call any more witnesses.” The photo shows his lawyer Alejandro Pérez, Virgilio Crespo, and the judge’s husband at the Union Espanola Club of San Francisco seated together. Foco announced that this video is already in the hands of the authorities to initiate an investigation of the participants in the meeting.
Martinelli was acquitted in a prior case of illegal wiretapping of opposition politicians and citizens during his presidential term, between 2009 and 2014. The “Pinchazos” case involved an alleged state espionage network, which tapped the phones of more than 150 people, including politicians and journalists. Ricardo Martinelli was also accused of embezzling public funds to create the network when he was the Panamanian head of state. The former president had already been declared “not guilty” in the first trial in 2019, but an appeal court annulled the sentence and ordered the trial to be repeated. Martinelli said that there is “not a single piece of evidence” about him in that case.
The meeting shown on the video occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, October 31, at the Unión Española Sports Club, in the San Francisco district. The next day, when the former president’s trial resumed, the defense abruptly announced that it was suspending the presentation of evidence. He only presented 13 items of evidence, even though he originally had a list of at least 40.
In the widely circulated video circulated by Foco Panamá, Martinelli and his lawyer Alejandro Pérez are observed at a table at the Unión Española Sports Club. At the next table was the former representative of Bella Vista, Virgilio Crespo, who at some point even sat at the same table with Martinelli and Pérez.
Martinelli spent just 13 minutes at the venue. When he left, he said goodbye to a man who occupied a table with two seats, but he always remained alone, chatting on his cell phone. Foco Panama identified that man as the husband of Judge Osorio and said that Ricardo Ramírez Bustos is a close friend of Virgilio Crespo, although they are not seen together in the video. Two days after the meeting there, Martinelli wrote that his luck had changed. “Never give up, not long ago I was in a very difficult place and although I knew that I was going to get out of all this persecution, I never imagined that I would be able to unmask my enemies so publicly” (sic), he wrote on November 2nd in his Twitter account. Martinelli’s trial resumed on November 8, with the concluding phases, and the following day, Judge Osorio, Judge Iveth Francois Vega, and Judge Jennifer Saavedra Naranjo acquitted him.
