Panama judge asks Interpol to help catch ex-president
Panama judge asks Interpol to help catch ex-president
By AFP 1 hour ago
A judge in Panama asked Interpol on Tuesday to help arrest the country's ex-president Ricardo Martinelli on spying and corruption charges, police said.
"The national police received the demand and it was immediately sent to the Interpol office" in Panama, said the head of the force, Omar Pinzon. "They immediately began procedures according to international police norms."
Martinelli is thought to be in Miami, according to media. The foreign ministry on June 9 said it wanted the United States to extradite him.
Martinelli, a millionaire businessman, is accused of corruption and of tapping opponents' and journalists' phones and emails during his 2009-2014 presidency.
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Miami’s ‘Scarface’ Pad Has New Resident: A Billionaire Ex-President in Exile
by Blake Schmidt
Bill Faries
September 16, 2015 — 8:28 PM CDT
Updated on September 19, 2015 — 7:00 AM CDT
Just outside downtown Miami, in a luxury condo building made famous by the 1980s hits “Scarface” and “Miami Vice,” a billionaire ex-president is holed up in exile.
Ricardo Martinelli -- scion of Panamanian landholders and an ex-Citigroup banker -- was Latin America’s most popular president a few years ago, a leader who was just as likely to make headlines for helping his country win an investment-grade rating as he was for his lavish personal spending and extravagant parties. Yet as Panama’s Supreme Court was opening probes earlier this year into his role in alleged phone-tapping and corruption scandals that drained millions from government coffers, Martinelli skipped town. A separate investigation is now underway in crisis-torn Brazil, home to a company that won concessions for mega-projects in Panama during Martinelli’s 2009-2014 tenure, and another was carried out in Italy.
A silver-haired, portly 63-year-old, Martinelli spends much of his time in Miami’s waterfront Brickell neighborhood defending his public record, maintaining his innocence and hinting at a possible political comeback. He’s on Twitter constantly, tweeting opinions and announcements to his legion of 557,000 followers.
When he sat down for a recent interview at a Miami cafe, he was in a combative mood, lashing out at political enemies and rattling off his administration’s accomplishments -- surging growth, falling unemployment and construction of Central America’s first subway system. “We put Panama on the map,” he boasted. And then he laid out what essentially form the two central points of his response to the probes: Ricardo Martinelli has been a very rich man for a very long time; and rivals are using the investigations to weaken him.
More:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/from-miami-s-scarface-pad-an-exiled-billionaire-fights-back