Former President of Panama Ricardo Martinelli has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison. He is accused of money laundering while in office.

Former President of Panama Ricardo Martinelli, who ran for the presidential election in May 2024, was sentenced to nearly eleven years in prison for money laundering during his term, the courts announced on Tuesday. The court “sentences him to 128 months in prison”, i.e. ten years and six months, and to pay a fine of 19 million dollars, he said in its judgment

The right-wing former president (2009-2014) has repeatedly called the legal proceedings against him a “rigged political trial”, and claimed that it was “political persecution” aimed at preventing him from running for the 2024 presidential election.

At the beginning of June, the prosecution requested the maximum sentence of 12 years in prison against Mr. Martinelli for having purchased with public money in 2010 the majority of the shares of the Editora Panama America press group, owner of the eponymous daily newspaper as well as the popular newspapers Critica and Dia a Dia. According to the prosecution, the majority of the press group's shares were purchased through a complex arrangement of public limited companies into whose accounts various companies had deposited a total of 43.9 million dollars in bribes obtained during the public works auction under the presidency of Ricardo Martinelli