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On June 24 they opened bids for the sale of the presidential beach compound at Punta Mala, Los Santos. Satirist Ubaldo Davis, who faces a jail term for an unflattering depiction of President Moscoso, was ruled out of the bidding process. Arnulfista activist Tony Domínguez, who said he had organized a group of 65 friends of Mireya to put up $10,000 each to buy the property and turn it over to the president, found that she really doesn't have that many rich friends and could only come up with $400,000 in pledges. So when the rush-rush special bidding process had run its course, the winner was --- Mireya's brother, Franklin Moscoso, his sister's ambassador to Greece. The process has been blasted by Transparency International, the PRD and most of Panama's newspapers. Franklin Moscoso makes about $5,000 a month, and questions are now being asked about where he got the $641,342 he bid for the property. Moreover, there's a provision in Panama's laws that forbids government employees from bidding on government property and contracts. The controversy is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

The United Nations Population Program says that the rate of HIV infections among Panamanian children and adolscents has gone up some 500 percent in the past 10 years. The agency warns that it's not just a health disaster for the individuals involved, but a major economic problem looming over the entire nation. Panama has the fourth highest rate of HIV infection in Latin America.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry's legal advisor and former secretary general, Andrés Avelino Jaén, has been ordered jailed on a series of fraud, forgery and bounced check charges. He was the ministry's point man in dealing with the Miss Universe pageant, but at the same time he was allegedly passing bad checks in six-figure amounts to Colon Free Zone and Panama City businesses and involved in a series of swindles.

The theft of nearly 300 golden artifacts from the Reina Torres de Arauz Anthropology Museum last February, an obvious inside job, led to the arrest of every person who was known to hold the keys or know the combinations that gave access to the priceless antiquities, most of which have subsequently been recovered. One of those jailed was National Institute of Culture (INAC) secretary general Beatriz de Ruiz, who supposedly was the only person who had the combination to the gold room door. The door was opened for the robbery, with no signs of forced entry. However, the Supreme Court has held that there's not enough proof that Ruiz was the only person who had the combination to justify her preventive detention. That leaves a dozen suspects still behind bars and a few other still at large, but also indicates that prosecutors may have a weak case against some of the others who have been accused.

Renegade PRD legislator Carlos Afú plans to run for re-election in his Los Santos district on the Arnulfista Party ticket. Afú, whose break with the PRD gave President Moscoso control of both the Supreme Court and the Legislative Assembly, has alleged that bribes were paid to gain legislative approval of the CEMIS projectt, and in turn is accused by erstwhile party comrades of accepting bribes to approve the president's high court nominees.

Remember the US Southern Command's categorical assurances that there were never any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Panama? The nuclear aspect of that is top secret and will remain so. The claim about chemical weapons has been discredited from several directions, most notably by US military veterans who were subjected to chemical weapons tests here. Now the Pentagon admits that in the 1960s and 1970s it sprayed non-lethal bacteria over Fort Sherman to determine whether biological weapons work well in jungle settings. The tests here were part of a series of experiments in several places that used at least 5,000 service personnel as unwitting test subjects. The Pentagon, which has not contacted the test subjects, says that there were no illnesses and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered the investigation into the program halted.

Panama's National Maritime Service, which in general lacks the resources to patrol our long coastlines against various sorts of smuggling, has undertaken an extra duty for a few weeks. They're enforcing a navigation exclusion zone around several of the Perlas Islands while the US television "reality" game show "Survivor" is being recorded. Vessels are banned from coming within a nautical mile and one-half of the islands of Bartolome, Mogo Mogo and Gibraleon, and there are also lesser restrictions on incursions and picture-taking around the western part of Saboga and the islands of Chapera, Boyarena, Bolano, Membrillo and Casaya. The restrictions will remain in effect until August 15. However, The Panama News has obtained copies of photos of the sort that the police are trying to prevent and will publish them in an upcoming issue. We did not, however, disrupt the competition, nor do we intend to do so.

University of Panama law professor and former Supreme Court magistrate Aura Emerita Guerra de Villalaz has been chosen as one of the judges for the international court hearing cases arising from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The court meets in Arusha, Tanzania.

Prosecutors and PTJ agents from the Public Ministry recently raided the offices of the presidential Truth Commission that Mireya Moscoso set up to investigate politically motivated slayings and disappearances during the dictatorship. They acted on a complaint by old Christian Democrat activist Edwin Wald, whose sister Rita disappeared in 1977, which alleged that the commission had mishandled funds and that Sandy Anderson, the trainer and handler of a doberman named Eagle that can sniff out long-buried human remains, planted evidence on the grounds of the former Puma infantry company barracks in Tocumen. Some of the bones that Eagle found were identified in DNA tests by a reputable US laboratory commissioned by the Catholic Church as those of disappeared activist Heliodoro Portugal. The Public Ministry, after making a televised show of prosecutors' mishandling of human remains found by the commission and submitting a different bone than that identified in the church-sponsored tests to a lab of Attorney General Sossa's choosing, disputed the identification. However, by all independent and informed judgments Sossa's objections are spurious. So how, then, could Anderson have planted the specific bones of Heliodoro Portugal on the grounds of the Puma barracks for Eagle to find? Sossa figures that fraud was possible --- hence the raid --- but now the Truth Commission has filed a series of criminal charges against Wald, alleging that he filed false police reports and defamed the commission. Sossa, who like Wald traces his political roots through the Christian Democratic Party (now the Partido Popular), has steadfastly opposed the Truth Commission and its work.

The Second Superior Tribunal has dismissed charges against nine former members of the defunct Guardia Nacional for their alleged role in the disappearance and murder of leftist activist Heliodoro Portugal. The court ruled that a 20-year statute of limitations applies to murder cases, and Portugal was killed in the early 1970s. The ruling is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

The City of Colon's ill-fated attempt to issue municipal bonds --- something that's probably unconstitutional, was certainly unprecedented and was allegedly a massive fraud from the outset --- will be the subject of a criminal trial that starts in Colon's Second Penal Court on July 7. The defendants include Mayor Matilde Rosales de Ardines, city treasurer José Brown, city attorney Luis Banque, four members of the city council and two private businessmen. The scheme came to light when the FBI alleged an attempt to sell the bonds in the US by way of a fraudulent misrepresentation that the instruments were backed by Panama's national government. The city officials deny any responsibility for that claim. The case has seen the mayor jailed and freed and removed from office and restored again twice, with chaotic mass hirings and firings at city hall each time the mayor's office has changed hands.

Maritime judge Calixto Malcolm, facing charges before the Supreme Court of illicit enrichment while on the bench, has received a clean bill of health from Comptroller General Alvin Weeden. The comptroller's audit report maintains that Malcolm's expenditures and possessions correspond to his legal income.

A couple of illustrated articles in El Panama America that showed sailfish being killed in Panamanian waters by the Ecuadoran tuna boat Betty C have led to an arrest order against that fishing vessel. The articles contained photos clearly showing the netting of large numbers of billfish, in violation of Panamanian law, and in response the National Maritime Authority has issued an arrest order against the Betty C. The Panamanian government has asked for international cooperation in the matter, through the International Tropical Tuna Commission.

One indication of how US law enforcement authorities view Panama can be gleaned from an anti-drug operation directed at Colombian narcotraffickers. On June 26 the US Coast Guard in St. Petersburg, Florida showed off 5,500 pounds of cocaine and five Colombian suspects that the cutter Venturous captured on a speedboat off the Colombian coast. The US Coast Guard called their drug bust "Operation Panama Express."




Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
On the campaign trail
Colombian Army hinders AUC demobilization
Legislative Assembly session ends
Mireya goes to Washington
Coyote faces death penalty

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