A Panama court acquitted this Friday (06/28/2024) 28 people charged in the case Panama Papersthe historic leak of documents from the defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonsecawhich linked various world personalities to money laundering, reported the Judicial Branch (OJ).
“The Second Liquidator of Criminal Cases judge, Baloísa Marquínez (…) acquitted 28 people accused of the crime against the economic order in the form of money laundering, in the accumulated cases of the cases called Panama Papers and Lava Jatofollowed to the law firm Mossack Fonseca and his collaborators, as well as citizens of German nationality,” the OJ said in a statement.
In the sentence, the judge points out that in the Panama Papers It was determined that the evidence collected from the servers of Mossack Fonsecawith electronic evidence that was contributed to the process on paper, “did not comply with the chain of custody, as well as the principles that govern digital evidence mainly by lacking values ‘hash’ (mathematical algorithm to transform blocks of data) that would allow certainty of its authenticity and integrity.”
The judge also concluded that “the rest of the evidence was not sufficient and conclusive to determine the criminal liability of the accused, both for the funds from Germany and those from Argentina.”
Judge Marquínez decreed the “extinction of the criminal action due to the death of one of those named in this process.” This is the lawyer Ramón Fonseca Mora, head and co-founder of the law firm Mossack & Fonsecawho died on May 9 due to complicated pneumonia, according to what they told the agency EFE their families.
He also ordered the lifting of the personal and real precautionary measures against all those accused, including German lawyer Jürgen Mossack, founding partner of the firm along with Fonseca Mora. Mossack was acquitted of all charges.
Lava Jato and Panama Papers in the same file
If Car Washthe ruling indicates that “it was not possible to determine the entry of money from illicit sources, coming from Brazil, into the Panamanian financial system with the purpose of hiding, covering up, dissimulating or helping to evade the legal consequences of the preceding crime.”
The plot Car Wash of Brazil was accumulated in the same file with the case Panama Papers, given the affinity regarding the accused and the facts investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. The investigation into this case began in 2016 “due to news events related to the operation Car Wash in Brazil, which allegedly linked to a law firm in Panama dedicated to the creation of corporations,” as the OJ recalled.
For its part, the trial of the Panama Papers began on April 8, 2024, eight years after the historic leak of documents from the defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonsecawhich linked personalities from around the world to money laundering. The trial for the Panama Papers The trial ended on April 19, but the judge took the 30-day period allowed by law to issue her verdict in this case investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP, Attorney General’s Office).
The accumulated process consists of 837 volumes and more than 427,000 pages
ama (efe, reuters, afp, dpa)
Panama Papers tax scandal
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