Panama.- The Justice of Panama is in “debt” with the country and must do its part, they said Thursday to analysts and politicians after the United States prohibited the entry of former Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela (2014-2019) and his family due to his relationship in “significant” acts of corruption.
Varela thus joined former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), and two of his sons, Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enrique, who have been prohibited from entering the United States since last January for the same reason.
The four are implicated in the Odebrecht bribery case in Panama and will have to face, together with about thirty people, a money laundering trial that is expected to begin next August after a long and troubled process that began in 2015. .
Martinelli’s two sons served jail time for the Odebrecht case in the United States, where they pleaded guilty to laundering 28 million dollars and having carried out bribes in favor of the Brazilian company “on the father’s orders”, as his defense alleged.
“Panama remains indebted that its own Justice does what it must do to confirm these serious charges” of corruption that the US accuses. “Everything comes from outside, as has been the custom, and locally we do not have concluded processes and that, the It’s true, it’s unfortunate,” the former president of the Panama chapter of Transparency International (TI), Carlos Barsallo, told EFE.
The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said this Thursday that the decision on former President Varela “reaffirms the US commitment to combat endemic corruption in Panama,” and that he hopes that this action “will boost officials and authorities.” Panamanians “to address entrenched corruption and empower all those who uphold the rule of law.”
«It is the message of a politician from one country, who urges another country to do its homework. We have to do our homework, we have to investigate and, after due process, punish those who have violated the laws. That is too basic, but it is easily said and not done and we have spent many years in this same litany”, Barsallo commented.
The former attorney general (attorney general) and candidate for independent deputy Ana Matilde Gómez agreed with Barsallo that now “it is up to the Panamanian Justice to do its part.”
“I hope that others who are needed are added to the list of Ricardo Martinelli and Juan Carlos Varela,” Gómez told EFE, who considers it “opportune that as long as there is sufficient evidence, proceed, by all legal means that appropriate, to bring to light the actions of senior public officials who have used their power to benefit themselves.”
For the constitutional lawyer Ernesto Cedeño, the fact that Panama has two former presidents appointed by the US for corruption shows that the administration of Justice in Panama “is in intensive care.”
“For some high-profile cases and others, Justice does not work as it should, and that has a lot to do” with the fact that the judicial system lacks “full, total and financial independence” that allows it to operate “without having to do with the ups and downs of politics,” the analyst told EFE.
Former President Varela, who was Martinelli’s vice president and chancellor until they distanced themselves in 2011, affirmed this Thursday that he was an “honest” president and managed with “transparency more than 20,000 million dollars” in works, thus rejecting the decision of the United States. United States to ban him from entering the country for corruption.
“I will do everything I have to do to defend my honor and that of my family,” added Varela, who addressed his message to Secretary Blinken.
