A 16-page insert in a 16-page edition of the tabloid La Critica, one of the EPASA newspapers that Judge Marquínez found was bought for Ricardo Martinelli with public funds skimmed off by way of kickbacks on overpriced public works contracts. The insert is Martinelli’s motion for the Supreme Court to essentially retry his money laundering case on the facts, in doing so delaying the final sentence so that he remains on the ballot for May’s presidential election. If the high court refuses to hear it, he may be serving his ten years and eight months prison sentence by then.

It’s all pretty scurrilous

photo and notes by Eric Jackson

The DEFENSE put two members of Martinelli’s inner circle on their witness list, but they did not show up to testify at his trial in the New Business case? As in, they declined to risk possible self-incrimination or perjury charges so it’s the judge’s fault that the defense could not produce its own witnesses?

Such is the stuff of Ricardo Martinelli’s last-ditch appeal before Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice.

It gets worse, both in the December 12 edition of La Critica and in the special insert. At the trial Martinelli pleaded that he doesn’t actually have a controlling interest in the newspaper chain, that the biggest bloc of shares belongs to a shadowy “Grupo Hebreo.” In yesterday’s edition of La Critica he says that the New Business company through which the EPASA newspapers were bought belonged at the time to a guy named Moussa Levy. That is, when everything else is failing, he blames ‘the Jews.’