A series of inaccuracies and versions have been handled at the Office of the Attorney General of the nation, in charge of Kenya Isolde Porcell, on the case of bribes by the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
These actions have been performed by groups of lawyers and opposition sectors as a selective processing to unlink the relatives to the Government of President Juan Carlos Varela that may be mentioned on the disqualification of new statements tomorrow Thursday.
Early reviews would be the double discourse of Prosecutor Porcell, who opted for the application of a law to adapt it to the awarded whistle-blowing program (confession of crimes for a reduction of penalty) at the beginning of the investigation.
However, the change into the accusatory criminal system (SPA), through Law 4 of 17 February 2017, that reformed articles of the Judicial Code, the criminal code and the criminal procedure code, did not do enough for the contribution of proofs from the Brazilian Prosecutor's Office.
Therefore since the statements of the former directors of Odebrecht are subject to requirement of protection and not the formulation of charges to whistleblowers for corruption, which has not been categorized in the Panamanian law.
After this, the attorney general of Brazil, Rodrigo Janot, reported last Monday to the Prosecutors´ offices in nine countries, including Panama, which only would share the documentation with the countries requesting international cooperation by means of secrecy (secret) of the evidence in this case.
At the same time, Porcell asked those related to the process to qualify for the benefit of Law 4, 2017, that promotes the awarded whistle-blowing.
In his latest statements to pro-government newspaper La Prensa, Porcell recognized having opted to condition the process and benefit from the secrecy of documents that will be provided by the public prosecutor in Brazil tomorrow, and in which the participation of representatives of banks and political cronies to the Government is widely known that were mentioned in the denouncement of Odebrecht executives.
As a result, political analyst Juan Carlos Tapia said that "sooner or later we will know the full truth of the Odebrecht case and everyone will have to pay, including the authorities who pretended to be unaware".
For his part, lawyer Ernesto Cedeño claimed: "they´re taking us for idiots. First he sponsored the endorsement of our award whistle-blowing law, then encouraged the denouncement, now she´s is supposedly promoting secrecy".
Even figures such as panameñista José Antonio Domínguez recognize that "sooner or later, everything around the whistle-blowing program in the Odebrecht case will be exposed to the whole world".
Complicity
Odebrecht´s participation in the works of the State have been taking place since 2004, and still in 2017 the works in the Government of President Juan Carlos Varela have continued, so it is deemed as only right to investigate the constitutional presidential periods during which the company was active.
However, for lawyer Alejandro Pérez "we the citizens have seen a biased, selective investigation which keeps leaning towards cover up others, prompting a lawsuit by Attorney Sídney Sittón".
"There is a lot of interest from senior officials of this Government that don´t know the names of people who received bribes from Odebrecht, and even worked in past governments," he denounced.
At the same time, lawyer Luis Eduardo Camacho said that the performance of the Panamanian justice is an evidence that the Attorney General is not doing her job and there are people whom she is protecting.
"Due to that protection is that Panama has not been able to have access to documentation, since it is a public secret that they are withholding information to protect some people, and this is precisely what the citizens want to know", he explained.
