The former director of the National Bank of Panama (BNP), Bolívar Pariente, remained on the run from the law as this issue of The Panama News was uploaded. The last definitive public word of Pariente’s whereabouts came more than two weeks ago when his lawyer, former Attorney General Rogelio Cruz, said that the former bank executive was unavailable for formal questioning by prosecutors because he had gone to Miami on a business trip. Anti-corruption prosecutor Cecilia López then issued a preventive detention order against Pariente, which Cruz appealed before the Supreme Court, and subsequently an international arrest warrant was issued for Pariente via INTERPOL. In response to that warrant, the US State Department voided Pariente’s visa to visit the United States.
However, according to a source at the US Embassy here, the Americans believe that Pariente has left the United States and is probably hiding somewhere in Europe.
Cruz told El Siglo that he expects the Supreme Court to cancel the prosecution’s preventive detention order against his client, which he said would set the conditions for Pariente to return and face the charges against him.
The charges arise from allegations that the bank improperly granted loans, backed with insufficient collateral and in excess of the full cost of the project, for the Prados del Este housing development. That project, in which some of Pariente’s relatives figure as owners, promoters or managers, was built in the flood plain of the Cabra River in violation of a National Environmental Authority (ANAM) permit that required certain anti-flood measures that were not taken. This past September 16 and 17 residents of that development were routed by floods, which took the lives of several of their number. The government has since relocated the residents and ordered Prados del Este demolished.
Charged along with Pariente are a number of other BNP officials and several management figures in Promotora Nacional de Vivienda SA (PRONAVI), the project’s builder and promoter.
These include PRONAVI secretary Graciela Gómez, the sister of Pedro Lanza, who owns a one-quarter interest in the company. One of Gómez’s children is married to one of Pariente’s children, and she was also Pariente’s appointee as the bank’s intervener when a construction workers’s strike was the occasion for a power struggle within PRONAVI, an appointment that effectively put Pariente’s relatives in control of the project.
Also charged are former BNP board chairman José Antonio Pérez Salamero, ex-directors José F. Jelensky, Virgilio E. Sosa G., and Carlos Eduardo Carrizo Alba, former BNP credit committee members Galileo Ferrabone, Virgilio Castillo and Carmela Stanziola; and PRONAVI’s treasurer and board chairman Pedro Solís Espino, along with company spokesmen/shareholders Rafael Pérez Lanzielli and Abraham Crócamo Arévalo.
Solís Espinosa spent a weekend in jail when, after an indagatoria (formal interrogation to be used as evidence at trial) by Cecilia López, the prosecutor ordered him held in preventive detention. The following Monday he was freed.
Meanwhile the prosecution is having a hard time finding several of the other accused PRONAVI figures and has issued orders for police to bring them in for questioning.
In addition to the case pursued by López, there are also criminal charges against some of these defendants as well as other figures involved in the promotion, financing and issuance of permits of Prados del Este that have been brought by residents who survived the floods. There are also a number of civil actions arising from the affair, and ANAM has handed PRONAVI a million-dollar administrative fine for ignoring the requirements set forth in the environmental impact statement that it approved.
The Prados del Este affair continues to have political repercussions. The Legislative Assembly has approved on third and final reading an amendment to the Penal Code creating criminal sanctions for those involved in development projects in inherently dangerous areas such as flood plains.
Under the law, which was passed by a 49-5 margin, with 24 deputies absent or abstaining, the legal representatives and decision makers of companies that knowingly build or promote housing developments that for environmental faults place the residents’ lives in danger can face prison terms of two to four years. Also, public officials who improperly issue permits or public financing for such projects could be imprisoned for between three and six years. Although President Torrijos had not signed the law at the time this issue of The Panama News was uploaded, it is expected that he will do so.
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