A  move by convicted money launderer  Raúl de Saint-Malo, brother of Panama’s formerVICE- president, to replace a five-year jail term with “community work” as a university professor was denied by compliance judge Angeline Adames.

Attorney Nedelka Díaz had requested that the penalty be replaced by a community work penalty, as a professor at the Maritime University of Panama (UMIP).

De Saint Malo has the title of naval engineer and has vessels in which he could train marine students, said the lawyer.

But Judge Adames determined that the request did not meet requirements such as the approval of the university, the accreditation of the Academic Council of the UMIP and also did not provide information on who would be the person in charge of supervising the activities that Saint-Malo would carry out.

She said that the nature of community work is to serve the community.

Prosecutor Tania Sterling said that there would be no social compensation, given the seriousness of the criminal conduct and the penalty applied.

De Saint Malo reached a collaboration and penalty agreement with the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in March. Part of the agreement was five years in prison. was applied, which has not yet begun to govern.

Sterling said that, as part of the agreement with the prosecution, De Saint-Malo returned $1.9 million and two vessels valued at $1.8 million.

Martinelli family links
According to the investigation, the businessman acknowledged that on the instructions of the brothers Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares - sons of former President Ricardo Martinelli - he made payments for the purchase of a helicopter that was subsequently seized by the Public Ministry on suspicion that it was purchased with money from money laundering.

In inquiries between May and June 2017 before the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, De Saint-Malo revealed that, after a tanker ship business that agreed in 2013 with the Martinelli Linares brothers, they formed the Petro Trading Services Corp. , through which payments were made to Franconaves and other companies.

These companies included Iberian Real Estate Development, Isthmus Energy Corporation, and Los Andes Development and Development, all linked to the Martinelli family and which are the subject of an investigation by the Public Ministry in the process related to the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and other legal proceedings.