After 6 days, the ordinary hearing in the case known as Lava Jato ended, where the Second Prosecutor’s Office against Organized Crime, represented by the superior prosecutor, Isis Soto, and the circuit prosecutors, Octavio Nicolau and Marcos Mosquera, requested the conviction for 28 people for the commission of a crime against the economic order, in its modality of money laundering and the acquittal for 4 people; the Criminal Cases Settlement judge, Baloisa Marquínez, accepted the term to decide the request.
Of this request for convictions, of the 28 people, 5 were as perpetrators, 4 as primary accomplices, and 19 as secondary accomplices.
In a hearing, the prosecutor Isis Soto, accredited the criminal participation, legal classification and the request for sentencing of each of the defendants, where Mossack Fonseca, through its collaborators and partners, covered up, concealed and prevented the determination of the origin of the property. , of the destination of goods, money, financial resources that were obtained illegally, accredited during the investigation and that was taken into account when pronouncing the order of appeal to trial, where acts that were carried out in the Federative Republic of Brazil, such as corruption, financial crimes, falsehood among others.
In addition, the prosecutor explained that the modalities of money laundering, according to the International Financial Action Group (GAFI), are the existence of financial intermediaries and front men, hiring experts subject to professional secrecy, tangle of shell or fictitious companies and collection accounts. or collection, pointed out by the financial expert presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, indicated that if he had analyzed the MF Treasure account until today’s sun, he would be analyzing it due to the large amount of flow that that bank account had, a situation in which the financial expert agreed. the defense, which did not see the account because it was impossible.
It was also made known that the law firm in Brazil did not operate, but they sold companies, they did not declare income in Brazil or Panama, and they created companies with similar names to confuse; and that a Mossack Fonseca Brasil employee was accused of destroying and hiding documents, where the Brazilian authorities have several telephone interceptions of the Panamanian firm. The Minister Counselor’s office created several companies, such as Murray Holding, which in the opinion of the Prosecutors served to launder money.
Likewise, there was the linking of people from management and management positions of the law firm who provided help to prevent the origin of the ownership of the assets that came from an illegal activity from being known, and the linking of the head of the Department of Computing of the law firm to hide information and extract it about the Lava Jato investigation, since it had the ability to delete and modify information with the consent of the majority partners of the firm; and the linking of another 16 people who acted as nominal directors, who were dedicated only to signing blank bank account documents, helping the money laundering commission.
The prosecutor stated when leaving the Court, “that precisely the allegations that were established at the time of the appeal of the judge’s dismissal order and that were accepted in second instance by the Superior Court of Settlement of Criminal Cases, that there was a criminal case for these people and in this sense we were at this ordinary hearing to discuss the issue of criminal responsibility and what is the degree of participation of each one, in the allegations it was established what were those evidentiary elements, where the punishable act and participation were accredited criminal of the defendants”.
In this investigation, which began in 2016, it was possible to establish elements that were collected from the international judicial assistance of the Federative Republic of Brazil, in which it was possible to establish the crimes preceding money laundering; In addition, open bank accounts in Panama and the traceability of the funds that linked to a law firm in the country that was dedicated to the creation of limited companies that supposedly had the objective of mobilizing these illegal funds.
