The court also ordered the lifting of precautionary measures against all the defendants who were acquitted in the trial.
panamanian justice he acquitted them 28 accused in the “Panama Papers” casethe leak of documents from a law firm linking personalities from around the world to a vast tax evasion scheme.
Judge Baloísa Marquínez acquitted the defendants of a crime against economic order in the form of money laundering, linked to the defunct law firm Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian justice system reported in a statement on Friday.
The judge decided that the evidence collected on Mossack Fonseca’s servers “did not comply with the chain of custody, as well as the principles governing digital evidence, mainly due to the lack of ‘hash’ values. [algoritmo matemático para transformar blocos de dados] which would allow us to be certain of its authenticity and integrity.”
Furthermore, Marquínez concluded that “the remaining evidence was not sufficient and conclusive to determine the criminal responsibility of the accused.”
The judge also ordered the shelving of the criminal proceedings in the case of one of the accused, Ramón Fonseca Mora, director and co-founder of Mossack Fonseca. The lawyer died on May 9, at the age of 71, due to pneumonia, according to what his relatives informed Efe.
Marquínez ordered the lifting of precautionary measures against all the defendants, including German lawyer Jürgen Mossack, a founding partner of the firm along with Fonseca Mora. Mossack was acquitted of all charges.
In the Lava Jato case, the judge indicated that “the entry of money from an illicit source, originating in Brazil, into the Panamanian financial system could not be determined to be intended to hide, conceal, disguise or help escape the legal consequences of the previous crime.”
The international Lava Jato bribery scandal, with its epicenter in the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, was tried in Panama together with the “Panama Papers” case, given the affinity between the accused and the facts investigated.
The Public Ministry had requested the maximum sentence, 12 years in prison, for Mossack and Fonseca.
In 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a compromising list of people involved in a vast tax evasion system, following a leak of 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents.
The case, which includes, among many others, Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and of the United Kingdom David Cameron (current head of British diplomacy), and footballer Lionel Messi.
The scandal revealed how these individuals created opaque companies, through Mossack Fonseca, to open bank accounts and create shell companies in several countries, in order to hide money, in some cases originating from illegal activities.
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Source: Observadora
