NEW MAYOR OF PANAMA CITY, MARTINELLI'S RELATIVE WHO WENT THROUGH LA PICOTA JAIL
By Joaquin Mauricio López / La República
Mayer Mizrachi, who on Sunday won the Panama City elections, was imprisoned in Bogota between 2015 and 2016.
In mid-2016, in Colombia, the internal board of the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (Inpec) confirmed criminal and disciplinary investigations for irregularities in the release order of a Panamanian citizen prosecuted for corruption in his country. At the time, the then director of La Picota prison, Fabio Becerra, was relieved of his post due to the departure of Mayer Mizrachi. The name is back in the headlines today, as the former inmate has just won the mayoralty of Panama City in the elections of May 5, 2024.
With more than 32% of the votes, almost 156,000 voters in his favor, Mayer Mizrachi won in the Panamanian capital, and the name has not gone unnoticed if one takes into account that he has been in criminal investigations, and in addition, Mayer is the son of Aaron Roni Mizrachi, brother-in-law of the former president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli (the latter, today, is in asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama after being accused of money laundering).
HOW DID THE NOW MAYOR COME TO THE PILLORY?
According to the fiscal summary of the Panamanian authorities, at the end of 2015, the now mayor-elect of Panama City was arrested at the Rafael Núñez International Airport in Cartagena, required with an Interpol red circular for being “accused of a crime against the public administration of Panama related to the government of former President Ricardo Martinelli”.
He was detained for a little more than six months in La Picota prison in Bogotá and, after having paid a bail of US$100,000, he was released on June 22.
The record also shows that Mayer Mizrachi requested political asylum in Colombia on June 23, 2016. Under the then government of Juan Manuel Santos, the Foreign Ministry denied it, so Mizrachi was deported to Panama on September 7, 2016.
CONTROVERSIAL EXIT FROM THE PILLORY
In Colombia, during 2016, there were several investigations against the people who were involved in Mizrachi’s exit from La Picota prison.
The exit from the penal center was controversial, because that year the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Inpec should make Mizrachi available to Migration Colombia, in order to expel him. The process did not happen as expected, that is why the Colombian Foreign Ministry denounced that the now mayor of C. de Panama was released, despite the fact that a patrol was waiting outside La Picota for Mizrachi (the day he was released).
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This article was originally published in La República, Colombia, with whose authorization we reproduce it here.
