Panamanian singer-songwriter and activist Rubén Blades said that he aspires that the prison sentence for the Odebrecht case handed down in the United States to two sons of the former president of Panama. Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), advances in the Central American country the cases of alleged corruption linked to bribes by the Brazilian construction company.
Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares were sentenced He was sentenced to 3 years in prison on May 20 by a New York judge, after confessing that during his father’s government they received 28 million dollars in bribes from Odebrecht.
In The moments prior to the reading of the sentence, Luis Enrique’s lawyer, James Mac Govern, declared: that the two brothers had acted “by orders of the father”.
“For the Public Ministry in Panama. There are no excuses anymore. Corruption is corruption, in any jurisdiction, language or geography. And the plague emanating from the New York process is the same that will be breathed, under the same circumstances, in Panama, when it is aired. To the prosecutors: fold your masks and get to work,” he said. Blades.
In an extensive document released this Saturday, Blades, born in 1948, recalled that Martinelli and his children are accused in Panama. in cases of alleged money laundering allegedly linked to Odebrecht bribes, processes that have progressed very slowly and generated harsh criticism of the Judiciary.
“We will see if the evidence presented” in the New York court “to convict the Martinelli brothers and their admission of having been ordered by their father to accept bribes from Odebrecht, will have equal evidentiary weight in Panama.” and they will help the Public Ministry in its pending cases against the former president.”
In Panama, Martinelli and his children are facing trial for alleged money laundering in the Odebrecht case, which involves a total of fifty natural persons and one legal entity, Importadora Ricarmar S.A., a company related to the former president, according to judicial data.
The former president is also accused in the case known as “New Business”, the supposedly irregular purchase of a media conglomerate, and his children in the case known as “Blue Apple”, the Creole version of the corrupt plot of the Brazilian construction company .
Blades pointed. that “the material provided” at the trial in New York “it seemed indicate or suggest that part of the ill-gotten money was used to buy EPASA S.A., a media conglomerate that includes ‘El Panamá; America’ and other national media outlets (“New Business” case).
The Odebrecht company was sentenced in 2017 in a New York court for the payment of 788 million dollars. in bribery in 12 Latin American and African countries.
The cases of corruption carried out by Odebrecht have caused great scandals and the opening of judicial cases in Brazil, Peru, and Peru. , Panama, Ecuador, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, at least.
Blades frequently denounces the political and social situation in his country. In an interview with the local network TVN last February, she proposed creating a “new administrative paradigm” to dismantle the endemic “Client State”, in order to “improve” the to a Panama plagued by corruption.