THE INVESTIGATION  of two Italians accused of a $20 million bribery deal in Panama is heading is in its fourth year as a judge of the Naples Court has again delayed the opening of the oral trial - until May 8.

[caption id="attachment_54281" align="alignleft" width="273"] Lavitola in his Panama heyday[/caption]

The defendants in the case are Valter Lavitola, the link-man of the corrupt deals with the Government of Panama, and Ángelo Capriotti, partner of the Svemark consortium. Lavitola was a favored party goer in Panama, courted by businessmen and politicians and frequently photographed with Martinelli, then Vice-president Varela and former Italian Prime minister Berlusconi.

Charges are connected to the frustrated construction of four modular jails in several  Panama localities by the Italian consortium.

The latest postponement occurred because of an administrative error. Capriotti was arrested on April 4 for a parallel crime of money laundering and bankruptcy fraud in Rome, but the judicial authorities in Rome did not properly communicate this information to the competent bodies in Naples.

The chief prosecutor of the Naples court, Vincenzo Piscitelli, and his deputy, Henry John Woodcock, completed the first  phase  of the case in November 2014

However, delaying tactics of defense lawyers and Italy’s notoriously slow judicial bureaucracy have added to the time lag in starting in oral proceedings.

The case has been  described as an Italian Soap Opera  by ex-Panama  president Ricardo Martinelli, whose name figures largely in the investigation

Panama applied to be an accusatory civil party in the case, which, if validated, confers to the country the right to pursue by judicial means full compensation for damages.