Sometime between the afternoon of February 15 and the morning of February 17, not long after the president changed directors at the National Institute of Culture (INAC), somebody who had keys to 19 display cases and knew the combinations that turn off hidden alarm systems stripped the Reina Torres de Arauz Anthropology Museum of its entire pre-Columbian gold collection. Missing are 315 pieces in all, most of them dating from the 9th and 10th centuries AD. Left behind were the unmarked reproductions that were in the display cases along with the originals that were taken.

The Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) hauled three low-level INAC employees down to the station for questioning --- Mireya’s top-level appointees never have to answer questions about corruption on their watch --- but to date none of the priceless artifacts have been recovered and nobody has been charged with the crime. Although the government is making noises about how it could have been the work of skilled professional thieves who can defeat locks without leaving tell-tale marks, it’s clearly an inside job.

Might the current INAC management attribute it to former institute employees? Then the failure to change locks and combinations, and the failure to post an adequate guard to protect Panama’s equivalent of crown jewels, would give rise to an inquiry about gross negligence were such a thing to happen in any other country. No such investigation is underway.

A notice has been sent out to Customs officials to be on the lookout for the loot, but no photos of the stolen items have been released to the press and public.

PTJ Chief Rodolfo Aguilera told reporters that there was another theft from the same museum, also apparently an inside job, in 2002. That case remains unsolved, and Aguilera suspects that the two thefts may be linked.

Thefts of archaeological treasures and international contraband in stolen antiquities by Panamanian government officials, along with more garden variety corruption in INAC, are not new stories.

At the outset of the Moscoso administration, The Panama News learned of and published the story of how groups seeking to rent INAC theaters for music, dance or drama productions were being told that checks made out to the institute would not be accepted, but rather payment had to be made by checks made out to individuals who worked at INAC.

Francisco Iglesias, who was Panama’s consul general in New York under the Pérez Balladares administration, is wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in the trafficking of stolen Peruvian antiquities. US law enforcement authorities say that Iglesias smuggled an ancient piece of golden armor in Panama’s diplomatic pouch and used the Panamanian diplomatic mission in New York as a gallery to show the piece to potential buyers (two of whom were undercover FBI agents), acts that amount to serious violations of Panamanian law. However, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa has not investigated, as Iglesias’s son is married to the former president’s daughter and it is Sossa’s tacit policy that people with such connections are immune from criminal liability.

Also during the Pérez Balladares administration, somebody who knew which display pieces were originals and which were reproductions (they didn’t mark them as such) stripped the museum at the El Caño Archaeological Park, another INAC facility, of several pre-Columbian statues. The pieces, which were left unguarded and uninsured, have never been recovered.

The Reina Torres de Arauz Anthropology Museum was also looted of many valuable pieces during the 1989 US invasion, when former US President George HW Bush and General Colin Powell departed from standard American military procedures and allowed unchecked looting throughout the country. None of the artifacts taken from the museum at that time have been recovered, nor has any person ever been prosecuted for the thefts.

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Massive museum theft an inside job