Pérez Balladares releases secret fund data, Endara to follow

Former President Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares has released details of the expenditures from his secret presidential fund during his adminstration to the nation’s larger corporate news media, and El Panama America has published the information in a series of stories. The entire tale has yet to be told, however, as new questions were raised by the revelations.

Before the former president opened his books, there had been a lot of speculation about what the presidential discretionary funds were and are for, with many people presuming that the money must be for matters that must be kept secret for reasons of state security. However, it seems that the bulk of Toro’s discretionary fund went for travel, ceremonial expenses, opinion polls about contemplated policy decisions, subsidies to artists and athletes, relief in emergency situtations, special advisors and ordinary but unbudgeted government expenses. Rather than compensation for 00-type spies, the fund was used for things like subsidizing swimmer Eileen Coparropa’s travel to international competitions, putting on Carnival festivities in Panama City and helping poverty-stricken indigenous communities that had been wiped out by floods.

The biggest questions raised by the former president’s disclosures are about more than $130,000 in unspecified credit card expenses.

One surprise was a series of payments to Guillermo Endara’s daughter. It turns out that an ex-president is legally entitled to bodyguard and secretarial services at public expense and that Endara’s daughter Marcela served as his secretary after he left office. Toro’s secret fund covered about $10,000 of the five-year tab for that.

In the wake of Pérez Balladares’s disclosures, Endara called for the Comptroller General’s office to release the details of his administration’s secret fund expenditures.

Meanwhile, Mireya Moscoso is jealously guarding the secrecy of her special fund expenses.

To many observers, what appears to be going on is a game of high-stakes presidential poker aimed at embarrassing Moscoso and her political faction before the May 2 elections and possibly destroying any hopes of her continued political influence after she leaves office.

However, Comptroller General Alvin Weeden, a staunch Moscoso loyalist, maintains that it would be illegal for him or any successor of his to audit a presidential secret fund. To those already suspicious of the president, all that statement does is suggest that she has something to hide.

The pressure on Mireya is bound to increase as Endara’s secret expenses are revealed.

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Toro releases secret fund data