As she said she would do, after 40 days on the job Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez issued her report on a number of public corruption cases that had grabbed the public’s attention during the term of her predecessor. In some of these she’s reopening what had been dead letters, while in others she said that the courts have either blocked or delayed any action.
On the “Durodollars” case, wherein several people were convicted for stealing in excess of $35,000 in cash from the freezer of a secretary at the Ministry of the Presidency, Gómez noted that her predecessor never questioned the provenance of these funds, which would not be readily explained by a government secretary’s salary. (Nor, for that matter, would it explain the source of the funds that bought that ex-government worker’s new beach house in San Carlos.) The matter has been referred to the Comptroller General for a financial analysis that may in turn lead to a prosecution for inexplicable enrichment while holding a public post.
Another possible unjust enrichment case to be similarly probed has to do with where Mireya Moscoso’s brother, then the Panamanian consul in Greece, got the money to buy the Punta Mala presidential beach house.
The case of helicopter HP-1430, which was used by the Moscoso administration, may be reopened. The chopper had apparently run out of gas over the Gulf of Panama near Rio Hato while ferrying part of Mireya’s entourage from Punta Mala to Panama City, and the following day, pursuant to orders from either Mireya, her police chief Carlos Barés or the Minister of Government and Justice at the time, Winston Spadafora, the National Maritime Service retrieved a briefcase full of cash from the floating aircraft and then sank it with machine gun fire. Such an investigation as there was began with the questioning of the sailors who sank the helicopter, one of whom was disciplined by the Moscoso administration for looking into the briefcase that was retrieved. But the aircraft was not registered as belonging to the government and an insurance settlement was promptly paid, apparently to or through a Colombian businessman in Miami. The Moscoso administration stonewalled the Public Ministry’s investigation and after a year got a judge to quash the probe. But meanwhile a request was made to US authorities, pursuant to a mutual law enforcement assistance treaty, for information on the ownership of the helicopter and other relevant information. Gómez said that information obtained from the Americans could possibly become the new evidence needed to support a motion to reopen the investigation.
In the PECC case, which appears to be a matter of the Pérez Balladares administration awarding a contract for maintenance of the nation’s buoys and lighthouses to a company in which it appears that the ex-president himself owned a hidden interest, the Supreme Court invoked Toro’s immunity at the time as a member of the Central American Parliament to forbid any investigation of Ernesto Pérez Balladares. But as several other individuals and companies are involved in the affair, Gómez said that as soon as the courts release their stays on the investigation she intends to pursue the case against all parties other than the former president.
Just before he left his office and Gómez assumed hers, former Comptroller General Alvin Weeden purported to end the investigations into the uses that Mireya Moscoso and Ernesto Pérez Balladares made of their presidential discretionary funds. In Toro’s case, journalists were paid off and certain travel and entertainment expenses that some might questions were paid with public funds. In Mireya’s case, over the five years of her term she spent an average of more than $1,000 per day in public funds on clothing and jewelry for herself. In keeping with the new constitutional provisions about politicians’ immunities, her predecessor petitioned the Supreme Court to open investigations, but that request has been unanswered for more than three months now.
The CEMIS case, in which it is alleged that the Legislative Assembly was bribed to approve a multimodal cargo handling and airport expansion project at and around Colon’s France Field airport, was definitively quashed by the Supreme Court on the basis of legislative immunity --- even though not all of the suspects were legislators --- and Gómez offers little hope of being able to pursue that matter.
The cases involving Mireya’s use of funds donated by Taiwan, including for the construction of the empty Museo del Tucan children’s museum and the funneling of aid to Panama’s health system through the “private” Fundacion Mar del Sur, are also pending before the Supreme Court, which received a petition to open an investigation of these matters this past November but has yet to respond.
Another matter pending before the courts is the “equalization” deal that in the first instance gave Panama Ports, the local subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, large breaks in its contractual obligations to pay rents, fees and percentages to the Panamanian government for its concessions at the ports of Balboa and Cristobal. (Other private port operators invoked the breaks that Panama Ports received and provisions in their own contracts to in turn receive further substantial benefits at public expense.) Gómez noted that a challenge to the legality of that “equalization” has been pending before the Supreme Court for some time and that once that has been decided the Public Ministry may be looking at whether public officials --- in this case Mireya Moscoso and/or former Minister of Economy and Finance Norberto Delgado --- exceeded their authority or abused their powers.
Delgado was purportedly let off the hook of an unjust enrichment investigation by a last-minute decision by former Comptroller General Alvin Weeden. But the Public Ministry moved for a reconsideration and the new Comptroller General, Dani Kuzniecky, granted that request. That leaves the investigation in the hands of the Office of Patrimonial Responsibility (DRP), which is part of the Comptroller General’s bailiwick, and if an inexplicable enrichment is found Gómez said it will be prosecuted.
(Meanwhile, Delgado’s defense against suspicions that he amassed wealth that can’t be attributed to honest sources while holding public office has him on another hook. If he owned those vast tracts of the Darien that he was stripping of their trees all along, then it would appear that there was a matter of tax evasion. An investigation of that matter is also underway.)
Also underway are investigations against former National Bank of Panama CEO Bolívar Pariente and former Caja de Ahorros CEO Carlos Raúl Piad. Each of these Mireyista activists is suspected of using their positions with the state-owned financial institutions they headed to improperly favor friends, relatives or other persons with special influence. In Pariente’s case the alleged abuse resulted in the bank’s financing of a the Prados del Este housing development, which was illegally built in flood plain, leading to several drowning deaths during flooding last year. Charged along with Pariente are four other individuals. Lawyers for defendants in both of these cases are before the courts trying to block the investigations.
(Pariente is a fugitive from justice, and in many countries --- but not Panama --- the courts routinely refuse to hear motions or appeals from persons who refuse to submit themselves to the courts’ jurisdiction. Thus while his lawyers are litigating on his behalf before the Supreme Court, Pariente has from his hideout, which is probably somewhere in Europe, been issuing statements about how he’s willing to come back to face charges only if he gets a guarantee that he won’t be sent to jail.)
On the matter of funds and equipment allegedly missing from the Canal Once public TV network, Gómez said that the institution’s books are being reviewed by the Comptroller General but at the moment there isn't sufficient evidence to open a criminal case.
Also in this section:
Gómez reports on corruption cases
Legal and political issues abound in Cerro Petaquilla mining concession
Panama News Briefs
