Once again,
Mireya’s intent on dishonoring one of Panama’s treaty
commitments under the Inter-American Convention Against
Corruption.
The last time
she tried to renege on this treaty, you may recall, was a big
disaster for the Panamanian financial sector. The president got
up before an international money laundering convention and
announced that she would not honor the treaty provision that
bans bank secrecy in cases where the proceeds of political
corruption are being hidden or laundered. Venezuela, Mexico and
Argentina, all sick of their sleaziest public officials parking
their bribe and kickback money in Panama, promptly imposed
punitive measures for transactions involving Panamanian banks.
The Group of Eight’s Financial Action Task Force and the
OECD followed by putting this country on their financial
blacklists. Many depositors took their funds out of
Panama’s banks.
This time,
Mireya is attempting to avoid the treaty commitment to make the
unexplained acquisition of wealth while holding public office a
criminal offense.
Well of course
she would do that. With her secretary stashing larger sums of
cash than her salary or previous assets could explain in her
freezer, with the unexplained wealth that allows her top
people --- or Mireya herself --- to whimsically order the
destruction of a mysteriously acquired presidential helicopter,
with many members of her administration excused from filing the
legally required financial statements upon taking office, of
course Mireya opposes laws banning inexplicable enrichment in
office. The whole point of her administration is the enrichment
by any and all means of a handful of friends and relatives.
When the law
first came to her desk, as part of a package of legislation
dealing with various financial crimes, the president vetoed it
because she said it was “inconvenient” and because it
discriminates against politicians.
Now, Arnulfista
legislator and attorney José Isabel Blandón has
come up with a modified version. Inexplicable enrichment would
be a crime, but it could only be investigated if summary proof
is submitted with the complaint. In other words, for a crime in
which financial records are generally a necessary element of
the proof, there can be no investigation unless the complaint
is accompanied by financial records, and the financial records
can’t be obtained unless there’s an investigation.
Pretty slick ---
if you’re a mediocrity whose entire higher education was
obtained with difficulty at Dade County Community College.
Foul! cries
Attorney General José Antonio Sossa. With this new law,
he’ll NEVER be able to investigate corruption, he
complains. As if he has investigated corruption rather than
acted as one of its principal defenders.
A recent
finding in a case wherein one of the kids of the extended
Latorraca family that infests the Moscoso administration ran a
young mother and her toddler down while driving a BMW on Tumba
Muerto, dragging the little boy more than 100 feet to his
death, critically injuring the mother and then fleeing the
scene is freshest in the public eye. The investigation by
Sossa’s Public Ministry found that the hit-and-run
incident was the victims’ fault.
Now maybe skid
marks on the road, dents on the car and the distance between
detritus left on the road and where the boy’s body was
found contradict the eyewitnesses who told their story to TV
cameras and the daily newspapers. Maybe there were other
witnesses with different stories. Maybe the victims DID run out
in the busy road, which has no proper pedestrian crossing, when
they shouldn’t have. We don’t know and won’t
know because the court files are not available to the public.
But the young
woman who lost her son and is now recovering from multiple
severe injuries is responsible for the spoiled yeye in the BMW
fleeing the scene?
What a fitting
emblem for the current state of Panamanian governance. Mama is
double dipping with two fat government salaries, one as a judge
and the other with the Ministry of Youth, Women, Children and
Families and her kids can do anything they want with their BMWs
and not have to answer for it.
Ah, but
that’s not political corruption per se --- just the
impunity granted by the Sossa regime to the children of the
political class.
For a better
case, consider one Francisco Iglesias, which arose during the
Pérez Balladares administration, on Sossa's watch.
Iglesias was
the Panamanian consul general in New York. According to the
FBI, he smuggled a priceless piece of pre-Incan Peruvian gold
armor into the United States in the Panamanian diplomatic
pouch. Then he used the Panamanian Consulate on the Avenue of
the Americas in New York as an illicit gallery for the display
and sale of looted antiquities, showing the artifact to
undercover FBI agents at that place. A sale was arranged, and
Iglesias and two accomplices drove down to Philadelphia in a
Panamanian diplomatic car. His two cohorts went into a hotel to
meet the undercover agents and consummate the sale, where they
were arrested. Iglesias stayed in the car, and when his
accomplices didn’t promptly return, he fled the scene and
then fled the United States. He’s now wanted by the FBI,
but beyond their reach here in Panama.
The undercover
agents’ affidavits and the two accomplices’
confessions made in open court are ample summary proof that
Frank Iglesias broke a number of Panamanian laws.
However, Frank
Iglesias’s son is married to one of former President
Ernesto Pérez Balladares’s daughters. So Sossa
didn’t prosecute. He didn’t even investigate.
So yes, the
proposed Moscoso-Blandón inexplicable enrichment law is
an ugly piece of pro-corruption legislation and a betrayal of
Panama’s international commitments. But no, we
shouldn’t take anything that Attorney General Sossa says
about this or anything else at face value.
Also in this
section:
CFP, Proposed tax hike for Americans working
abroad
Bernal, How Panama treats
displaced Colombians
Jackson, Mireya's ban on
investigating corruption
Gutman, School of the
Americas was THAT bad
Girvan, The Greater
Caribbean This Week
HRW, Ashcroft attacks
human rights law
