Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli is being investigated in Spain in a case of espionage and harassment of a woman for which eleven people, four of them police officers, were arrested on the island of Mallorca (Balearic Islands), official sources reported Thursday.
According to the Spanish press, this is a woman with whom Martinelli had a relationship and who was entrusted with spying when she was on vacation on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca in July 2020.
“A total of eleven people were arrested, four of them from the Civil Guard, for being part of a criminal group and harassing a woman,” whose identity was not revealed, nor was her relationship with Martinelli, a spokesman for the Civil Guard in Palma, the capital of Mallorca, told AFP.
These people, detained between Monday and Tuesday, acted “on behalf of a person from Panama,” the spokesman said, without further details.
According to legal sources to AFP, former President Martinelli - who is already being tried in Spain for a case of alleged corruption - is being investigated in this case.
The Spanish press, which cites sources of the investigation, states that it was Martinelli who commissioned the monitoring of women.
The detainees, who called themselves “Group Kougar”, watched and followed the woman in Palma and on the beaches she visited, and even spied on her from jet skis while she was on a boat, according to the newspaper El Mundo.
The woman noticed and reported the facts to the police.
Two of the detainees, one of them civil guard, were placed in pre-trial detention and the others were released with precautionary measures, such as the withdrawal of their passports, reported the Balearic High Court of Justice.
Martinelli, Panamanian president between 2009 and 2014, is on trial in Spain for allegedly receiving bribes from Spanish construction firm FCC in exchange for contracts for public works during his administration.
Speaking by videoconference in December before the National High Court, a high jurisdiction in Madrid, the 70-year-old former president denied allegations of corruption and money laundering.
Martinelli, who was pointed out in several corruption investigations during his administration, was acquitted last November by a Panamanian court in a case in which he was alleged to have illegally spied on opponents from the National Security Council (CSN) during his tenure.
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