Former Supreme Court judge denies sale of decisions

Hours after published  reports of recordings of  conversations with  a Panama lawyer in which he claimed, to have bribed  former Supreme  Court Judge Oydén Ortega Durán, the ex-magistrate  said: “There is no money that could buy any decision of mine …”  The recordings obtained by undercover investigators were of Janio Lescure, who believed he was talking to Russian entrepreneurs who planned to open nightclubs in Panama staffed by imported sex workers.

Ortega spoke with La Prensa last Friday: “I have asked – he affirmed – who is Lescure or who is that person? … I saw him portrayed in a chronicle of you, but even there. I don’t know that person … Saying something like that is not only reckless because it is unfounded, but because, in fact, I don’t know why that is published. ”

Lescure said, that Ortega was paid $500,000, through his brother-in-law, for the purchase and sale of a ruling in favor of a Lescure client: the rector of Columbus University Joaquín Villar -García and a daughter – who also denied paying Ortega for the ruling.

“I clarified,” Ortega said, “when Lescure made the statements [published in Spain lin  January] that I did not know Lescure. I don’t know him. “

“Who knows Oydén Ortega, knows that never in my life, have dirtied my hands with money … ever, ”he said.

The former magistrate does admit that he knows Villar-García, benefited from a ruling in which he was a speaker, “but I have not seen Lescure from near or far.

“I deny that I received directly or indirectly a sum of money from him,” he insisted.

Credibility 
Ortega questioned Lescure’s credibility. “What evidence do you have, what truthfulness… One’s behavior says it all… public and private behavior. … So, how can it be destroyed with a thing that is not as short as it is … Then, that has no merit … I really appeal to the truthfulness of things … They are very serious things that affect … “.

Asked if he had  – considered ​​suing. Lescure for having said all those things about him in Spain, Ortega said

“ What do you gain by suing, if the damage is already done? What do you earn by suing?. –  But, but I do know that is a lie. I can tell you that I am going to sue, because I would have to seriously consider a situation of that nature, to sue people who are incurring a falsehood of that nature.

“There is no basis for saying such a thing,” added Ortega; you talk to me about half a million [dollars] and then you tell me five million [for another case in which Lescure says he knew he had ‘commissioned’ for the sale of a ruling in which Ortega was also a speaker].

The former magistrate is not convinced that the courts of justice are a good scenario for Lescure to answer for what he said in Spain.