In the midst of the debate over the Panamanian bench in the Central American Parliament (Parlacen) brothers Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto hold since 2019 the call alerts that the constitutional benefit could help them evade justice since they are implicated in two processes for money laundering.

The parliamentary and electoral privileges were not created to avoid justice, nor as a patent of corse to be invoked whenever it is convenient, the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (Cciap) stressed in a statement.

The guild has indicated that the electoral criminal jurisdiction was conceived to promote fair and equitable popular elections, since it has its genesis in the need to protect the candidates to positions of popular election from the persecution to which they could be subjected by those who were in power.

However, they point out, over time, this figure has been deformed to the point of becoming a shield of impunity behind which politicians and people involved in high profile cases hide.

To this they added the distortion created around Parlacen and the desperate, intentional and convenient use of certain deputies to shield themselves from facing justice, for which they urged to review the Panamanian participation in the regional hemicycle.

For this Monday, it is expected that for the second time the Panamanian bench will review the swearing in of the Martinelli Linares brothers, involved in money laundering in the Blue Apple case and together with their father in the Odebrecht case.

For this crime, the accused have already been imprisoned in the United States, after confessing to a New York judge that they used the financial system of that country to launder at least 28 million dollars in bribes from Odebrecht.

In the case of the Martinelli Linares, the status of deputies to the Parlacen, could decree the procedural rupture and, if so, their cases would be sent to the Supreme Court of Justice, which is the entity constitutionally in charge of investigating and prosecuting the lawmakers of the National Assembly and the Parlacen. If the Martinelli Linares family are not sworn in today, they will have two more chances left: one at the Parlacen board of directors meeting (in which all presidents, vice presidents and secretaries of the member countries participate) to be held from Thursday, August 17 to 21.

They could also do so virtually at the plenary session on August 22, when both executives and deputies from all Parlacen member states will participate in events to be held in Managua, Nicaragua.

mh/arm/mem/ga