The Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office will be increasingly pressured not to depend on the evidence obtained as a result of the collaboration agreement signed with the Odebrecht company, with the executives of the construction company and on the information collected from box 2, in which the instructions on what to pay, to whom, when and how, in addition to the nicknames given to important political figures where the company developed mega-projects.

The reason is that the requests will cascade for the Supreme Court of Brazil to declare useless the testimonies of the businessmen who planned the bribery scheme, as well as the use of information from the Drousys and MyWebDay encrypted systems as it did on the 19th. December, when he vetoed the use of the above during the Odebrecht trial at the request of the lawyers of businessmen, also accused of money laundering in the case in question.

On March 14, the Federal Court of Brazil received the petition from former president Ricardo Martinelli, also accused of the crime of money laundering, who intends to benefit from the same fate as other defendants. He seeks that during the trial, the prosecution cannot receive statements from people capable of deciphering the bribery scheme. These are: André Rabello, representative of Odebrecht in Panama, who knew the faces and amounts that politicians received in exchange for carrying out projects or expediting their development. Olivio Rodrigues, the company’s external services man (2006-2016) who, through the companies Constructora Internacional del Sur and Select Engineering, executed the orders of the Department of Structured Operations (DOE) to benefit officials and politicians with millions from Latin America, including Panama.

According to Rabello’s statement, dated August 2, 2017, before the Sao Paulo prosecutor, when referring to the ‘lobbying’ services that the company received in Latin America, “he indicated that in Panama said service was provided by the Martinelli family. “, reads the petition made to the Brazilian magistrates.

Additionally, Rabello “made reference to a meeting with a candidate for the Presidency of Panama in the offices of his supermarkets, in which he indicated that the problems that Odebrecht had had in Panama revolved around compliance with payments and that they maintained a debt of $50 million, to which he responded that it would be paid after the elections.” Finally, he “admitted to having been a donor to Martinelli’s presidential campaign,” the letter reads.

The lawyers also asked the Court to veto the statements of Luiz Antonio Mameri, business leader for Latin America and Angola, linked to the authorization of payments and bribes to officials through the DOE.

According to Luiz Fernando Da Rocha’s statement, the MyWebDay system was used to send payment requests. They provided basic information, such as the beneficiary’s nickname, the amount to be paid, the date, the location or the current account. Da Rocha said that Drousys had the chats that the executives exchanged no matter what country in the world they were in, “each user had the possibility of saving their files in a safe place,” he said at the time.

In addition to the above, Martinelli’s jurists mentioned as part of the testimonies to be vetoed, that of Marcos De Queiroz Grillo, Angela Palmeira Ferreira, Fernando Migliaccio and Hilberto Mascarenhas, the latter in charge of the construction company’s secret books (2006-2015). as responsible DOE. This division made parallel payments through a network of corporations that sought to hide the money trail. For his part, Migliaccio confessed to the Brazilian authorities that 100% of the payments made by the DEO were illegal and revealed to the Brazilian authorities that in six years he carried out transactions for more than $3.5 billion, some of which were direct bribes and the other was to political campaigns.

The accusation made by the prosecution against Martinelli states that the origin of the funds received emanated from box 2 of the company, and is also based on the statements given by the executives in the collaboration agreement and on the analysis of the MyWebDay and Drousys systems. .

The Panamanian prosecutor’s office found out the traceability of the funds investigated for Martinelli’s participation, “which arises from having received money as the final recipient from companies such as Richeliu Investment Company Inc. Importadora Ricamar, as well as in a personal capacity, capital that was linked to Odebrecht box 2 used by the DOE for unaccounted illicit payments, channeled into accounts abroad, controlled by Constructora Internacional del Sur, Kleinfeld Services Ltd, Innovation Research Engineering, Intercorp Logistics Ltd, among others controlled by Olivio Rodrigues, which made money transfers to the company Caribbean Holding Services Ltd, which subsequently executed financial transactions and issued cashier’s checks that had Martinelli as a beneficiary,” reads the petition from the former president’s lawyers. Likewise, the allegations of Mr. Aarón Mizrachi on September 2, 2020 stand out, who during the investigation said that Martinelli was his brother-in-law 17 years ago, for which she had received money from the company Odebrecht and its subsidiaries.

Given the ruling in favor of other businessmen, it is very likely that the Federal Court will benefit Martinelli and other co-defendants, such as former president Juan Carlos Varela, if it decides to do the same, which will complicate the work of the prosecution, although it previously indicated to La Estrella de Panama that despite the judge’s decision, has other evidence resulting from international proceedings that strengthens the case.

Recently, the Second Liquidation Court of Criminal Cases in Panama announced that the trial scheduled for July will take place next November. According to the document, the readjustment responded to the “need to carry out investigations abroad, in order to obtain documentary and testimonial evidence, in addition to notifying the defendants residing outside of Panama.”

As described in the request filed by Martinelli’s lawyers, the Second Liquidation Court of Criminal Cases has not yet been notified of the decision of the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil that favored other businessmen.

Martinelli’s lawyers told the Court that this is a case identical to that of the pre-named ones in terms of the scope of the effects of the Federal Court’s decision and, in particular, the decision of the third extension of the Federal Court by declaring the uselessness of the evidence kept in box 2 of the construction company, as well as the prohibition of investigative acts in national territory derived from useless evidence, that is, the testimonies of the executives of the construction company that the prosecution intends to use during the trial against the accused of the crime of money laundering.

“In the aforementioned decision of the third extension that benefited the co-defendants, His Excellency identified the risk of the acts supported by illegal evidence, having expressly determined that for such reasons there is no way to conclude that the elements of conviction derived from the systems Drousys and My Web Day, used in the collaboration agreements signed by Odebrecht that support the case filed against Panama and from which the request to carry out an act of international cooperation in Brazil derives, are null and void, so the use is prohibited. practice in national territory of the acts of instruction that arise from them,” reads the argument of Martinelli’s lawyers in Brazil.

The Organized Crime Prosecutor’s Office made a collaboration agreement with several company executives with the purpose of gathering information and evidence against the 36 defendants in the bribery scheme. However, the Brazilian courts decided that the evidence in the Lava Jato case, from which the bribery investigation derives, was manipulated within the collaboration agreement and conditioned its participation in the countries interested in sharing the information with the judicial authorities. This is evidence that is intended to be used again in Panama through the interrogation of witnesses through videoconference during the trial. If allowed, “it would be equivalent to cooperating with the continuity of a criminal process based on illicit evidence, because it is undoubtedly inadequate, as the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil has already recognized,” reads the court’s decision that vetoed the use of these tests in Panama.