Lawyer at center of bribery scandals loses $5 million bail appeal

Attorney  Mauricio Cort the alleged frontman in multiple corruption and money laundering investigations will stay behind bars after The First Superior Court rejected an appeal against a  judge’s decision to deny the posting of  a $5 million bond.

The constitutional guarantee protection appeal was against the eleventh alternate criminal judge, Vila Urieta, in the case of  the remodeling of Casco Viejo, during the Martinelli administration (2009-2014).

Cort alleged that by not allowing him to post bail, Urieta violated his guarantees. However, in a ruling on June 24, 2020, with a presentation by Magistrate Carlos Raúl Trujillo, the Court concluded that the judge’s refusal was duly justified.

The ruling indicates that Urieta did not admit the posting of the bond in favor of Cort, since all proceedings within that file have been suspended after the presentation of an accumulation incident by the defense of the former Minister of Public Works José Federico Suárez –also investigated– before the Fifteenth Criminal Court.

The ruling orders that all the booklets and appeals that are pending before the Eleventh Criminal Court shall be suspended until the matter of jurisdiction is resolved.

Cort remains detained in the El Renacer penitentiary.

He is also being investigated for alleged money laundering related to the construction of section II of Vía Brasil, awarded to the Spanish FCC.

The lawyer is mentioned by Spanish authorities as part of a complex network used for the alleged payment of bribes to obtain contracts to carry out public works between 2009 and 2014.

In 2018, he signed a collaboration and penalty agreement in the case that followed him for the bribes that Odebrecht paid in Panama.