Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli is being investigated in Spain in a case of espionage and harassment of a woman for which eleven people were arrested, four of them police officers, on the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands), official sources reported Thursday.
According to the Spanish press, this is a woman with whom Martinelli had a relationship and whom he commissioned to spy on when she was on vacation on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca in July 2020.
“In total, eleven people were arrested, four of them from the Civil Guard, for being part of a criminal group and harassing a woman,” whose identity was not revealed nor was her relationship with Martinelli, a spokesperson for the police told AFP. Civil Guard in Palma, capital of Mallorca.
These people, arrested between Monday and Tuesday, acted “at the request of a person from Panama,” said the spokesman, without further details.
According to legal sources confirmed to AFP, former President Martinelli – who is already being tried in Spain for a case of alleged corruption – is being investigated for this case.
The Spanish press, which cites sources of the investigation, affirms that it was Martinelli who commissioned the follow-up of the woman.
The detainees, who called themselves “Group Kougar”, watched and followed the woman in Palma and on the beaches she visited, and even spied on her from jet skis when she was on a boat, according to the newspaper El Mundo.
The woman found out and reported the incident to the police.
Two of the detainees, one of them a civil guard, were placed in preventive detention and the others were released with precautionary measures, such as the withdrawal of their passport, reported the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands.
Martinelli, Panamanian president between 2009 and 2014, is being tried in Spain for allegedly receiving bribes from the Spanish construction company FCC in exchange for contracts for public works during his government.
Testifying by videoconference in December before the National Court, a high jurisdiction in Madrid, the 70-year-old former president denied accusations of corruption and money laundering.
Martinelli, singled out in various investigations for corruption during his administration, was acquitted last November by a Panamanian court in a case in which he was accused of having illegally spied on opponents from the National Security Council (CSN) during his term.
