WHEN  supermarket billionaire Ricardo Martinelli was elected president  of Panama in 2009, he promised in his inaugural speech, an end to corruption and said  that his administration might make mistakes, but there would be no thievery.

Instead, he ushered  in an era of  alleged bribery and theft from the public purse unmatched since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1989, with direct contracts fluttering out of the presidency like  flakes in an early snowfall,  blackened with grime before they reached the ground.

Among the early benefactors of criminal largesse was the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, whose former executives are spilling their guts to prosecutors in an attempt to ensure their jail terms will not match the 20 years handed down to the company’s president within days of his arrest.

Revelations of massive embezzlement and acceptance of bribes have been labeled “political persecution” by the shrinking band of followers of the Capot, currently fretting in a Miami cell without access to Twitter.

Now Odebrech executive Luiz Antonio Mameri, in charge of approving bribes in Latin America and Angola has told his country's prosecutors that he authorized $35 million in payments to Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares, the sons  of the former Martinet.

The money would have been requested by the  Odebrecht boss  in Panama, André Campos Rabello, and Mameri approved it. In exchange, the children of Martinelli, were committed to awarding new projects, streamlining  bureaucratic procedures and accelerating payments to the Brazilian company.

With a long-term Martinelli employee as the country’s comptroller, the bureaucracy wheels were well greased and there was a speedy return of illegal commissions.

Odebrecht became the main contractor of the State and orders ballooned from a few hundred million dollars to several billion in only five years.

The children of the former president, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, have denied receiving bribes from Odebrecht, but meanwhile, $22 million has been seized from a Swiss bank account along with  a multi-million dollar apartment in Madrid, and a helicopter.

Political persecution, corruption, or a mistake ?