During the previous administration we saw drug raids on a number of houses at former US military bases in the former Canal Zone, which had been purchased by a Colombian drug cartel. At the time the Inter-Oceanic Regional Authority (ARI), the public entity set up to receive and dispose of properties that came into Panama’s hands, with some justification said that once they had sold a house to a private party, they would have no control or reason to know if such a property was then resold to criminals.
But what about larger development projects? What about notorious characters working in the shadows behind apparently respectable front people from the outset of such ventures? Would it be reasonable for ARI to be on the lookout so that the former Canal Zone would not become a large-scale base of operations for racketeers?
Take for example, the former Horoko golf course, once the prized recreational asset of the United States Southern Command.
The golf course is, according to developer Dinesh Vaswani, being redesigned and rebuilt into a world class facility by the renowned Gregori International company. Also part of the $160 million development, which will be called the Tucan Country Club & Resort, will be 180 upscale villas and 134 condos around the course, a 50-room hotel with a casino and a golf clubhouse with bars, restaurants and meeting facilities.
And who has an interest in this enterprise? That’s an interesting question, about which we have obtained conflicting answers as to one particular individual.
Gilbert R. Straub was quite infamous long ago. Now a naturalized Panamanian citizen, he was the bagman who personally delivered Richard Nixon’s hush money to the Watergate burglars.
Where did the Nixon White House find someone to perform such a task? From the president’s racketeer friends, of course --- specifically in the entourage of one Robert Vesco, now a resident of Cuba and long a fugitive wanted by US authorities to face a number of charges stemming from alleged financial crimes.
Former undercover US federal agent Robert Mazur had this to say about Straub, during a 1999 appearance before a congressional committee:
“With regard to Panama, I shared office space with Gilbert Straub, a convicted drug money launderer who was formerly a lieutenant of Robert Vesco. During the early 1970's, Straub ran Vesco's operations in New Jersey. He is the individual who personally delivered $50,000 in US currency that was initially used to buy the silence of the Watergate Burglars. After Straub, Vesco and others were indicted for SEC violations in the early 1970's, he fled to Panama, established Panamanian citizenship, and embarked on a career of laundering illegal proceeds for US based organized crime figures. Straub informed me of innumerable facts relative to the illegal activities he and others staged from Panama."
None of the rest of the Vesco gang lived the lives of high rollers after Nixon and Vesco suffered their disgraces, but Straub inherited a considerable fortune from his father, who amassed it from investments in S&H Green Stamps. Straub acquired homes in Panama, England, Germany and the Bahamas and, along with his son who’s also named Gilbert Straub, also picked up a local reputation as the sort of person best avoided as a business partner. He operates a couple of companies, Proart Marketing Associates and Capital Investment Services Ltd, out of inconspicuous offices on Avenida Balboa.
And on the website of Proart Marketing Services, at http://www.proartmarketing.com/pages/2/index.htm, we found the following claim:
“Proart Marketing is a founding shareholder in both of the Development Companies for the Tucan Country Club & Resort a Gated Residential Community, Golf and Country Club, and Resort Hotel Project in Panama City....”
But Vaswani denied any connection with Straub in a telephone conversation with this reporter. He went on to say that his company “is not looking for any outside investors at all.” Shortly after the claim made on Straub's (Proart's) website was pointed out to Vaswani by this reporter, the quoted passage above as well as all of the several mentions of Tucan on the Straub website were erased.
However, in a plug for Tucan found on one Donald K. Winner's Panama Guide website, which features an interview with Vaswani, there was a link to at Tucan website, at which readers were in turn linked to the website of a Texas company dedicated to helping Americans move to Panama, which at http://www.movetopanama.com/tucan.html provides the details of what Tucan has to offer. Shortly after this reporter talked with Vaswani, the link to movetopanama.com on the Tucan website was removed.
[Editor's note: In an earlier posting of this story, not the first one, a preliminary draft was inadvertantly used to make corrections of a few typographical errors and that version implied a direct link between Winner's site and movetopanama.com. That impression was erroneous. Winner's site's link was to Tucan, which in turn linked to movetopanama.com.]
One little item on the latter page piqued this reporter’s interest: “Closing Costs on all purchases are approximately $4,500.00, which include legal fees, title certification, property transfer expense, and a Panama Corporation to hold title, all of which is charged by and arranged by the Development Corporation.”
You get a Panamanian corporation with a house? To this reporter it raised money laundering flags, but lawyers told The Panama News that it isn’t necessarily the case. In Panama these days it’s actually common for people to put their homes into the name of a company, so as to avoid legal expenses and taxes when the property passes to heirs upon the owner’s death.
But in any case, Vaswani told The Panama News that a sociedad anónima is not in fact part of the offer, that movetopanama.com is not an agent for his development, and furthermore that there is “no formal relationship” between Tucan and that Texas outfit. The developer said that the only outside company through which Tucan is being marketed to foreigners is Tropical Pathways, which organizes tours and investment seminars, sometimes apparently headed by EscapeArtist.com owner Roger Gallo. See http://www.tropicalpathways.com/panama-excursion.html. Gallo’s website is primarily a vehicle to sell real estate to Americans wishing to emigrate, usually for legitimate sellers but sometimes for fraud artists like the now-imprisoned Tom McMurrain, upon whom Gallo once heaped lavish praise.
The Gallo connection, however, was just a titillating distraction. Most probably, the Escape Artist publisher is just doing what he does, touting other people’s real estate and investment offers for a price. To be sure, there is an entire industry based upon attracting Americans to move to Panama, which has its seamy side and in which Gallo is an important figure, but that's another story.
The really interesting detail at movetopanama.com took awhile to sink into this reporter’s head. Its wording is for the most part identical with that found on Straub’s company’s website before it was erased, and with Tucan's website.
So is a piece of Horoko in the Watergate bagman’s hands? And should, or could, ARI have known about it? And moreover, if they knew, should they have done anything about it?
Our first calls to ARI took the authority, which has come under new management since the Horoko contract was awarded, by surprise. Their initial check disclosed no Gilbert Straub connection. But as the first this story was being written, a spokeswoman told us that they were looking into the matter. However, as of several days later ARI still had no comment.
After the first version of this story was uploaded to this website, a prominent businessman called this reporter to urge the removal of this story. In the course of that phone conversation, that individual said that Straub did have a role in Tucan, which he believed to be limited to sales, and that he had met with both Vaswani and Straub at the same time, on which occasion the Tucan project was discussed. The businessman who called this reporter wanted the story suppressed because he believed first, that neither Straub nor Vaswani were the money behind the Tucan project, but rather the main investor was Vaswani's father-in-law, second because he thought that Vaswani and his relatives may have been unaware of Straub's extensive racketeering history, and most of all because he believes that the Tucan project would be a positive development for Panama and its economy.
The publication of this story was accompanied by a lengthy and often bitter debate in the Panama Forum and Panama CEW yahoo email groups, with Donalk K. Winner attacking this reporter as one of the salient features. Meanwhile, however, other participants in that group had unflattering things to say about movetopanama.com, which they alleged was owned by the recently replaced Panamanian consul in Houston, of whom some of them voiced various complaints. Also in the course of those exchanges, Dutch journalist Okke Ornstein alleged that the Tucan, Proart and movetopanama.com websites were all apparently designed by the same person, apparently from the same template.
On December 7, Vaswani issued a statement about this matter, which will be published in full in the next issue of The Panama News. In it he backed down on his claim of "no formal relationship" with movetopanama.com and indeed had a commission arrangement with that company . However, he said that upon being informed of movetopanama.com's reputation, he severed that tie.
In Vaswani's statement he also admitted that he knows Gilbert Straub and discussed Tucan with him in the presence of others, but reiterated his claim that Straub had no ownership interest in the project. Waswani criticized this reporter for asking the wrong questions --- and it is true that he was not asked if he knew Straub, because all questions put to Vaswani in the telephone interview were about Straub's relationship to Tucan, in response to which Vaswani categorically and without qualification denied the existence of any relationship. Vaswani went on to claim that he did not know the sources for the statement that Straub has or had an interest in the project, even though in email communications the Straub website quotation was pointed to by this reporter to Vaswani before this story was published, and even though Straub's Proart Management website is clearly cited as the source of the quoted claim.
Straub's claim of some sort of a relationship with Tucan has now been backed by four different sources, but the definitive claim that "Proart Marketing is a founding shareholder in... the Tucan Country Club" can at this time be attributed only to Straub himself, through his company's website. So is Straub just a racketeer trying to insinuate himself into someone else's project, and fraudulently misrepresenting his role on his company's website? That could be possible. But why have the Tucan developers not said as much? Moreover, why did the references to Tucan come down from Straub's website so quickly after Straub's claim was pointed out to Vaswani?
It appears to this reporter that, in the infamous phrase from the Watergate scandal, the public relations tactic used here is a variation on "the modified limited hang out."
Which still begs more questions. How does a someone like Straub get mixed up in any way, shape or form with a large development project in the Reverted Areas without people who are investing a nine-figure sum knowing about his past? Moreover, how does this happen in a big project that required ARI's approval without arousing the authority's interest, much less its scrutiny?
Editor's note: The Panama News does not play the game, so popular in corporate mainstream journalism, of pretending that reporters and editors have no points of view that affect their stories. Instead, this paper's policy is to disclose biases or potential biases so that the readers can take them into account.
Thus it behooves this publication to point out some $900 worth of bad blood between this paper and the son of the subject of this story, Gilbert Straub, also named Gilbert Straub. The younger Straub used to own a strip joint on El Paical known as the Jungle Club, and through one Fritz Schmutte, who used to sell advertising for us, bought ads for that establishment in our old print edition. Now normally The Panama News has turned away all ads for brothels' escort services, strip clubs and the like, not because our editorial position is that they should be illegal but due to our standards of taste. However, as this contract was made on our behalf it was decided that it would be honored, which made us the subject of some substantial criticism from our readers at the time. The younger Straub fell behind on payments, then told us that he had sold the club and we would have to look to the new owners to get our money for the debt he ran up, and left the country. We were not the only people whom the younger Straub cheated.
Word of a connection between the elder Straub and Tucan first came from a caller many weeks ago, but at the time a cursory search produced no corroboration. But then another source told us essentially the same story, we dug a bit deeper and found a third source to tell us about the Straub-Tucan connection --- a person who has had dealings with Straub and is hostile to him as a result of those experiences --- who also gave us information that led us to the Proart Marketing website. In that forum the elder Straub's connection to Proart and Proart's connection to Tucan are essentially admitted by Straub. Then , after the first version of this story appeared, The Panama News received further confirmation of a Straub-Tucan connection.
This story is not published to get revenge against the son though the father, but because the editor considers it newsworthy when a notorious international racketeer claims to be involved in a large development project here.
Also in this section:
Former National Bank of Panama CEO on the lam
Does the Watergate bagman own part of Horoko?
Venezuela: Last interview with slain prosecutor
Panama News Briefs
