Panama Police received an Interpol alert against former president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), who last Thursday was awarded a safe-conduct to get out of the Nicaraguan embassy, where he has been asylum since February 2024 after being convicted of corruption. However, he clarified that this notification will not interrupt his departure scheduled on Monday to Nicaragua.
“Indeed, an Interpol alert arrived, as an agency that the Police (Panamanian) is a part,” confirmed this Sunday, in statements to the press, the director of the National Police, Jaime Fernández.
The officer explained that they received it on Friday as an “internal communication between agencies.”
However, Fernández clarified that “this alert will not interrupt the process that exists with the protocol that the former president travels to Nicaragua”, a transfer planned for tomorrow Monday, the day in which the deadline given by the Panamanian government ends to benefit from the save.
The ex -president’s spokesman, Luis Eduardo Camacho, warned, however, to the press that they had no knowledge of this alert of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol).
“I am surprised that he (the director of the police) has said that an alert has arrived,” Camacho said at the door of the embassy, since “international agreements specify that political asyles” do not affect them. He said knowing “several cases where Interpol has refused to grant the red alerts requesting some police agency from a country, because it considers that the case generated by the application is a political case.”
On the other hand, Camacho, who is also the general secretary of the Party by making goals (RM), founded by Martinelli in 2021, repeated the transfer protocol of Martinelli’s Monday to the airport, when “when leaving that door, he will be accompanied by the diplomatic representative of Nicaragua and will have, outside that embassy, people of the security estates, who are going to escape from that moment”.
The spokesman stressed that “at the moment that puts a foot outside that embassy, the physical security, integrally, of Ricardo Martinelli is the responsibility of the Panamanian state, until he approaches the plane and the plane take off.”
Interpol notification
According to Interpol, “red notification is a request aimed at forces of the order of the whole world to provisionally locate and stop a person pending extradition or delivery, or a similar judicial action. It is not an order of international detention.”
“People are sought by the requesting member country or an international court. Member countries apply their own national legislation to determine if they can stop a person,” he says.
Ricardo Martinelli and the ‘New Business’ case
Ricardo Martinelli, 73 years old and with a large business career, he took refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy in February 2024 after confirming his 10 -year prison sentence and a millionaire fine for the case New Businessrelated to the purchase of media with public funds.
Suboconduct to Martinelli
Panama’s Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Facha, on Thursday, informed Ricardo Martinelli for “humanitarian” reasons, which would be valid between March 27 and 31.
Hours later, Martinelli accepted this safe -conduct to travel to Nicaragua through his social networks.
This gesture in favor of Martinelli, who sponsored the current ruler of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, who was his Minister of Security and called him “friend” during the proselytizing campaign that led him to power in 2024, contrasts with the refusal of the previous government, led by Laurentino Cortizo (2019-2024), which was based on international conventions to reject the save.
Martinelli’s stay at the Embassy has generated controversy for its involvement in local policy and adaptations made at the headquarters for your personal needs.
In addition, Martinelli faces other accusations in Panama related to the Odebrecht scandal and in Spain for alleged bribes and a case of interception of communications in Mallorca.