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When Comptroller General Alvin Weeden first produced canceled checks and other documents suggesting that former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares owns a stake in Ports Engineering and Consultants Corporation (PECC), a company that his administration granted a lucrative contract to maintain the nation’s lighthouses and buoys, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa was out of the country and his suplente, Mercedes Araúz de Grimaldo asked Weeden for the documents and began an investigation. Meanwhile, the Direccion de Responsabilidad Patrimonial (DRP), a division of the Comptroller General’s office, had frozen more than $6 million of Toro’s assets over the affair and the ex- president was suing to get them unfrozen, and all this was going on after Weeden had challenged the PECC contract in court, lost and appealed.

The war of words and papers continued, but then Sossa came back.

A complete blow- by-blow would include multiple cases and many feints and ruses designed to confuse, but basically Toro and his supporters counter-attacked in the media and the courts, claiming that in the first place the old National Ports Authority and not his cabinet had approved the contract; that Weeden and the DRP were overstepping their powers after their claims had been struck down by the courts; and that in any case even if there was a conflict of interest with regard to the contract PECC did what it was contracted to do so it can’t be said that the government was cheated out of anything.

And on September 28, Toro paid a 20-minute visit to Sossa’s office, armed with a bunch of documents. The Attorney General then promptly filed a case with the Supreme Court, seeking a declaratory ruling on whether grounds existed to remove Weeden from his office for exceeding his authority.

Weeden, for his part, published another check, this one in the amount of $7,500 and made out to “The Bearer” by Fonte Investments Ltd, one of the shareholders in PECC. Along with the check was a deposit slip indicating that the check had been deposited into a numbered account in the Commercial Bank (Grand Cayman) Ltd by one Ernesto Pérez Balladares. This, Weeden claims, is further proof that Toro owns a stake in PECC.

But it seems that by then the investigation that Sossa’s deputy had begun was a dead letter.

Pérez Balladares also failed to declare $4 million in income on his tax returns, Weeden added, apparently to no legal effect.

On December 4, the Supreme Court’s presiding magistrate, César Pereira Burgos, ordered the freeze on Toro’s assets lifted while the court challenge to that measure proceeds.

However, despite the magistrate’s order the DRP maintained its hold on the assets, asserting that under the law it is an independent tribunal. Moreover, Weeden appealed Pereira Burgos’s ruling.

Meanwhile, Sossa’s motion for a ruling about removing Weeden from office was assigned to magistrate Adán Arnulfo Arjona. Also pending before the high court are the original case by which Weeden sought to void the PECC contract, a related case arising from Weeden’s freezing of assets belonging to former ports authority director Hugo Torrijos, and a couple of contempt charges against Weeden related to the same matters.

Not before the court are any criminal charges of corruption or conflict of interest.



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