PANAMA JUDGMENT
The popular 1969 novel ‘The Godfather’ by Mario Puzo recounted the violent tale of a Mafia family and the epigraph selected by the author was fascinating:
Behind every great fortune there is a crime. — Balzac
The novel was a popular sensation which was made into an acclaimed film. It is believed that this epigraph was inspired by a sentence that was written by Honoré de Balzac and its original version in French reads as follows:
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait.
(The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed)
It is ironical and a sheer coincidence that the present case revolves around that very sentence attributed to Balzac