All the defendants in the “Panama Papers” case were acquitted

Court of Panama 28 accused in the ‘Panama Papers’ case were acquitted this Fridayhistorical Documents leak from defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack FonsecaThe Department of Justice (OJ) said it has linked various people around the world to money laundering.

“In the cumulative cases of the Panama Papers and the ‘Lava Jato’ cases, the Second Judge of Criminal Cases, Paloisa Marquinez (…) acquitted 28 people accused of crimes against economic order in the form of money laundering. , the law firm Mossack Fonseca and its collaborators and German citizens. Continued,” the Justice Department explained in a statement.

In the sentence, heThe judge pointed out that evidence collected on Mossack Fonseca servers in the Panama Papers had been corroborated., With electronic resources contributed to the process on paper,”They do not comply with principles governing chain of custody and digital evidence mainly due to lack of ‘hash’ values. (Mathematical algorithm for converting blocks of data) Allowing you to be sure of its reliability and integrity“.

Further, the judge said, “The rest of the evidence is not sufficient and conclusive to determine the criminal liability of the accused.Both funds came from Germany and Argentina.

Judge Marquez ordered “Destruction of criminal proceedings for the death of one of those identified in the process”. This is lawyer Ramon Fonseca Mora, president and co-founder of the law firm Mossack & Fonseca, who died on May 9 of complications from pneumonia, his relatives told EFE.

Similarly Ordered the removal of personal and actual precautionary measures against all defendants, among whom is German lawyer Jürgen Mossack, a founding partner of the firm along with Fonseca Mora. Mossack was acquitted of all charges.

In the case of Lava Jato“It cannot be determined that money from illegal sources from Brazil enters the Panamanian financial system with the intention of concealing, concealing, simulating or helping to avoid the legal consequences of a previous crime,” the ruling points out.

The ‘Lava Jato’ conspiracy in Brazil was lumped in with the ‘Panama Papers’ case.Correspondence regarding the accused and the facts investigated by the prosecution.

The investigation into the case began in 2016, “due to news events related to the ‘Lava Jato’ operation in Brazil, allegedly involving the incorporation of a law office dedicated to creating public limited companies in Panama,” the judicial branch recalled.

For its part, the Panama Papers investigation began on April 8, eight years after the leak of historic documents from the defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that linked people around the world to money laundering.

The Panama Papers trial ended on April 19, but the judge took the 30-day period provided by law to issue his ruling on the case, which was investigated by the Ministry of Public Affairs (MP, Office of the Prosecutor).

The accumulated proceedings consist of 837 volumes and more than 427,000 pages.

EFE