For the record,
former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, who is immune
from criminal investigation and prosecution as a member of the
Central American Parliament in any case, denies it. However, a
series of documents produced by Comptroller General Alvin
Weeden, and the ex-president’s response to their disclosure
indicate that Toro owned a 7.5 percent silent share of the Ports
Engineering and Consulting Company (PECC), which was awarded a
multi-million-dollar lighthouse and buoy maintenance contract in
a no-bid 1997 concession by the National Port Authority, which
was later merged into the National Maritime Authority.
The documents in
question are a PECC check register that indicates that an
$18,000 Lloyd’s Bank check numbered 18767 and made out on
December 19, 1997 to the bearer (“portador”) was for a
7.5 percent silent owner’s net dividend, and the check
itself, which was endorsed on the back by Ernesto Pérez
Balladares. Toro pleads that this was a campaign contribution
for the failed 1998 referendum that would have allowed
presidents to run for re-election. However, that proposal was
not placed on the ballot by the legislature until May of 1998,
for a vote the following August.
Weeden also
alleges that companies in which the then-port authority director
Hugo Torrijos and his deputy Rubén Reyna held stakes are
shareholders in PECC. Both Torrijos and Reyna deny this, but
Reyna admits that he did consulting work for PECC after he left
the government and Reyna’s wife Dorita de Reyna, now an RPC-
TV Sunday morning talk show hostess but then Toro’s press
secretary, admits that she was PECC’s landlady.
PECC’s
president Charles Jumet, through his publicist Tomás
Cabal, has alleged that he made $25,000 campaign contributions
to both the Torrijos and Moscoso campaigns in 1999, and that
just before Moscoso took office he met her, National Police
Chief Carlos Barés, Immigration director Ilka de
Barés and several other people over dinner at a
restaurant on Via Argentina, and that shortly afterward two men
purporting to be envoys from Carlos Barés and incoming
National Maritime Authority director Jerry Salazar (who’s
now Canal Affairs Minister) demanded a total of $300,000 per
year in payments to avoid problems with the contract. Jumet said
he didn’t pay and that legal disputes with the Moscoso
administration ensued.
Martín
Torrijos has acknowledged the 1999 campaign contribution. Mireya
Moscoso says she “doesn’t remember,” and appears
to be disinclined to check her records.
Both
Barés and Salazar deny making any demand, in person or by
proxy, of Jumet. Barés denies having had dinner with
Jumet, which, if one is to believe the latter’s version,
would have been in Mireya Moscoso’s presence.
Meanwhile,
Weeden alleges that Cabal is the mastermind behind a criminal
conspiracy to link him to the Russian Mafia, and by a convoluted
series of events the name of this reporter and The Panama News
has entered some of the published stories about the affair.
(Cabal has
been making offers to buy The Panama News, which have not been
accepted. He did indicate that there was some urgency on his
part to conclude the deal because he had a hot story on the
Russian mob that he wanted to see in print. Basically were he to
offer to buy it outright for sufficient cash at the time of sale
not only to satisfy yours truly but also this paper’s
creditors, that might be acceptable. However, the deal he was
offering was for me to receive a $2000 per month two-year
contract and continue working for the paper, without him ever
disclosing who his financial backers were. As Cabal was Marc
Harris’s publicist, there is no way I’d accept to work
through him for undisclosed backers. However, as you shall see,
it turned out that my suspicion that I might be working for the
jailed “offshore asset protection guru” were
apparently unfounded.)
It turns out
that in addition to PECC, Cabal is working as a publicist for
the San Cristobal Land Development company, whose Bocas del Toro
teak and noni farm scheme has been reported upon in a most
unflattering way by this newspaper. (They say they’re
charging me with criminal defamation for it, but that was months
ago and I haven’t been served with any papers.)
Weeden filed
some odd criminal conspiracy charges against Jumet and
apparently Cabal, and alleged that agents of the National
Security Council have been following Cabal around and
photographing him. National Security director Ramiro Jarvis
flatly denies that his agency has done any such thing. San
Cristobal’s Panama City offices were raided and Cabal,
several of San Cristobal’s top people and journalist
Michelle Lescure were called to testify before prosecutors.
Lescure tells of
a strange meeting with San Cristobal to which Cabal brought her
on the pretext of a possible ad translation job, at which the
discussion turned to San Cristobal’s intention to acquire
The Panama News through Cabal and publish a tale of Russian
gangsters’ ties in this country. Cabal in general denied
Lescure’s story.
(For
basically the same reasons that I won’t do business
directly or indirectly with Marc Harris, I also would never sell
The Panama News to San Cristobal, let alone go to work as a
front for them.)
San
Cristobal’s lawyers said that they’ll file
“judicial slander” charges against Lescure, and Dutch
journalist Okke Ornstein, who’s basically engaged in a feud
with Lescure at the moment, joined in the attack on her.
Meanwhile, it
seems that the only tie between PECC and San Cristobal is that
they use the same publicist.
Amidst all the
charges and counter-charges and often bizarre twists and turns,
the current balance appears to be a major embarrassment for the
former PRD administration, another example of the problems with
Panama’s campaign financing system that probably affects
the PRD and the Arnulfistas equally (maybe worse for the latter,
as Mireya has aggravated things with her “can’t
remember” routine), and some spectacular extortion
allegations against the current administration that are not from
the most trustworthy source.
However, it
appears that the final word on this story is not yet in and
won’t be for awhile.
Also in this
section:
Panama News
Briefs
Powell here to discuss
corruption
PECC scandal touches PRD and
Arnulfistas, but mostly Toro
Mireya outed on family
interest in land along road
