Judge Raymond Dearie, of the Eastern District of New York, will decide this Friday, May 20, the future of the brothers Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares. He will dictate the sentence they will receive for having laundered $28 million in the US financial system as a result of the bribes received from the construction company Odebrecht to favor a close relative, a high-ranking Panamanian government official.
At 3:00 p.m. Panama time, the reading of the sentence is scheduled with the presence of the children of former President Ricardo Martinelli, his lawyers and the prosecution. Both will be able to go to the judge, request that the minimum time in prison be imposed on them. But surely Dearie has already decided on the issue after studying the requests of the defense and the prosecution. Two distant positions.
The former prosecutor of New York, Abel Arcia, explained that generally what is expected this afternoon is only the reading of the sentence, however, there is a mystery about what the judge will do. “There is an enormous range of possibilities, of what the defense attorneys are requesting, that the time served be taken into account and that they finish now, and not be imprisoned, or that they do what the Probation Department requested, which is 15 years. of prison, or what the defense attorneys together with the prosecution had signed, which is a period of time between 9 years to 11 years, three months,” he said.
He added that the judge can make whatever decision he wants regarding how much time is.
“The judge can really do what he wants, but you have to take into account that what the judge does could be appealed, that is, if the judge exceeds the sentence, that could be appealed,” Arcia said.
Although both have pleaded guilty to the main crime of the indictment, conspiring to launder Odebrecht bribes, it does not necessarily mean that the Martinelli Linares brothers will receive the same sentence.
