The most recent allegations made by the defense of the brothers Luis and Ricardo Martinelli are obviously those of professionals who receive payment for doing the work of trying to get them out of jail. The minimum sentence that the prosecutors have requested – 9 years – is, according to the lawyers, the most severe sentence imposed “for foreign bribery in the history of the Second Circuit” of justice in New York.

The issue here is that it is very likely that this high-ranking official – a relative of theirs – who was the main actor in the plot of the Odebrecht bribes will never receive punishment in the United States, because he has preferred to hide under the skirts of the Panamanian Constitution, to dodge the charges brought against him in the United States.

It is perhaps because of this manifest cowardice that the North American prosecutors ask that the full weight of the law falls on the accused so that they pay their sentence and even that of the coward who is still hiding in Panama, betting that no one will know what is already an open secret throughout the country. There is no person more cowardly than the one who lets someone else pay for their mistakes and crimes. But he is so fearful that he will even try to take refuge where the herons nest. LA PRENSA,  May 16.