In August of 2000, the criminal complaint shown below was delivered to the old office of The Panama News on Via Argentina. Recently the nation's Ombudsman and the Organization of American States have been investigating all of the criminal charges against Panamanian journalists, they requested a copy of the same. Apparently they couldn't find the criminal charge on file in any Panamanian court.

The usual procedure when a Panamanian journalist receives a criminal complaint is the hiring of a lawyer, who is expected to check the case out, follow its progress through the courts and resist the charges to the maximum extent possible. That, of course, requires the expenditure of time and money by the accused.

However, this newspaper doesn't have the resources of the corporate mainstream media and its editor doesn't think and act like other editors. Rather than hiring a lawyer and raising substantial sums for a legal battle before tribunals that would very likely be biased against journalists, the decisions were made to wait for the judicial process to take its course, to appear before the Panamanian courts without an attorney if necessary, and to prove the facts of the case above all before the tribunal of public opinion and possibly at some point in one or more tribunals in the United States.

How would the US connection come into play? Well, read the column that's appended at the exhibit to Mr. Antadillas's complaint below. Written by a prominent Panamanian physician under a pseudonym, it's about how a US-funded program for some Panama Canal retirees was paying a lot of money for kidney dialysis in private clinics while hospitals would do it cheaper. We're talking about the US government being taken here, with ample proofs of the facts that Antadillas disputed on file with the US Office of Personnel Management. This criminal charge is also arguably a violation of international law, of treaties that protect freedom of the press to which both the United States and Panama are parties. The defendant is a dual US and Panamanian citizen. Thus, while Antadillas may very well be able to count upon rigged Panamanian courts taking his side, he may also be subject to US jurisdiction and liable to trial before American courts where his political connections add up to zero influence.

On the face of it, Antadillas didn't state a valid claim for criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria). First of all, the sort of false allegation that would give rise to such a charge must be in the nature of a wrongful assertion that an illegal act has been committed. It's not illegal not to have the lowest kidney dialysis prices in town. Second, a close reading of the complaint will show that Antadillas doesn't specifically identify anything that he claims to be false and specifically denies.

And the fact of the matter is that at the time the story was published, San Fernando Hospital was offering kidney dialysis services for about half of what Antadillas's clinic was charging. Moreover, the great majority of dialysis services performed in Panama then and now are done by Santo Tomas Hospital and Seguro Social facilities, for well below what Antadillas's clinic charged then and charges now. These facts are matters of public record, both in the United States and in Panama.

Since the story and the criminal charge, Antadillas's clinic retained the contract referred to in the story despite San Fernando's lower bid. President Moscoso's advisor did, however, have to lower his prices to keep the contract.

We are informed that San Fernando lost out because they were eliminated from the bidding, because they didn't actually have all the machines on hand to fulfill the contract. It should have been easy enough to remedy that problem buy purchasing more equipment, but it seems that neither of the two importers of kidney dialysis machines were selling to any private competitor of Antadillas's clinic at the time. Why might that have been? A new Santo Tomas Hospital is being built, and betweent the Health Ministry and the Social Security Fund, a lot of equipment sales will be made to the Panamanian government. But maybe not by importers who are eliminated from the bidding by some arcane adjustment in the specifications.

At the moment the health care plan is under investigation the US Office of Personnel Management, as the result of unrelated allegations by a former member of its board of directors.

And meanwhile, what of the criminal charge? More than two years have passed and no cop has arrived at The Panama News office with notice of an appointment to be interrogated by prosecutors.

So has a file been lost in Panama's notoriously inept legal system? Or did presidential aide Alvaro Antadillas have this criminal complaint served, but not filed with the system, just as a ploy to make those who publish articles he doesn't like spend money on lawyers? At this point, The Panama News has no plans to invest time or money into finding out the answer to this question. That defensive position may change some day, but at the moment the ball is in the court of President Moscoso's advisor.