The lawyer and former deputy Guillermo “Willy” Cochez, in an interview with Radio Panama, reacted to information disclosed about the possible tax evasion of the Super 99 supermarket chain and assured that these cases must be investigated; However, he said that other companies must also be investigated regardless of political affinities or if they donated to campaigns for members of the current government.
Cochez stressed that the information published by the newspaper La Prensa on the Super 99 tax fraud was provided by the FBI and lamented that “in Panama, if the information does not come from abroad, our prosecutors, our authorities do absolutely nothing, and that is painful; it is good that the investigation of tax fraud is condemned”.
“I don’t know if they are just persecuting Martinelli, but I hope that the law is applied to everyone, to everyone. Here how many people will not be defrauded to the treasury, and that is worrying because it is money that cannot be used for other things; I repeat, it seems good to me that they investigate everyone equally, ”he said.
Cochez denounced that he filed two complaints against a “multimillionaire” telecommunications company, where they carried out operations for more than a billion dollars, before the General Directorate of Revenue (DGI), of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, but the DGI insists on not investigating because they are close to the government.
He added that in another claim filed with the DGI, a penalty was determined for treasury fraud in the order of $1.2 million dollars, but this was reduced to $60 thousand dollars, due to the fact that the “company is related to the PRD (Party Democratic Revolutionary) and Vice President José Gabriel Carrizo.”
