Mr. Pariente goes to jail

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Pariente turns himself in, López to finish her career prosecuting him

Go directly to jail...

by Eric Jackson, mostly from other media

On April 20, defense attorney Rogelio Cruz said that his client, the fugitive former National Bank of Panama (BNP) director Bolívar Pariente, had slipped back into Panama and was disposed to turn himself in if a proper agreement to cancel the arrest warrant could be reached. President Torrijos angrily complained of both the mockery and law enforcement's failure to nab Pariente, and soon police were visiting not only Pariente's usual haunts but also the homes of prominent figures from the Moscoso administration. That elicited complaints of political persecution from the likes of Mireya Moscoso, but the increased pressure led Pariente to walk into the David PTJ station at 3 a.m. on April 24 and surrender. Since then he has been held without bail to await various charges of financial misconduct with respect to the Prados del Este housing project, which was the scene of fatal floods last year.

Once the former head of the BNP was in custody, the case proceeded toward the indagatoria, the formal questioning for use as testimony in the trial file. That's being personally handled by anti-corruption prosecutor Cecilia López, who had put in a request for a week's vacation time.

But López is nearing her 30th anniversary of working for the government and had a couple of months worth of vacation time accrued, and the Public Ministry said that she'd have to take it all at once. That would be inconvenient, so it was announced that López won't go on vacation now, but after she's done with the Pariente case she will be retiring as a prosecutor.

Also complicating the prosecution, and delaying the completion of the indagatoria, is the fact that the Comptroller General's audit of bank records related to the Prados del Este affair are still not complete. The defense has used this to attack the charges in their inception. The way that argument goes is that a public official can't be investigated for a crime unless full proof of his or her guilt is presented at the outset, so since an audit was not presented when the charges were brought it was improper to open a case and have an audit done. That favorite argument on behalf of impunity for corrupt politicians, however, may not be legally applicable to managers of state-owned enterprises, even if they, like Pariente, happen to be former legislators and political insiders.

With Pariente's arrest ensued much speculation about his fate, from Mireya's reported concern that the process will be rigged against him to anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro's concern that the process will be rigged against him.

Among those advocating Pariente's release was former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, who argued that since the banker didn't kill anyone he shouldn't be held without bail. The charges against Pariente do not include homicide. They include a series of financial irregularities that include the state-owned BNP's financing of a construction project in which his relatives had an interest, and the bank's paying out of the money despite the developers' open violation of a permit requirement that they raise the ground level at the site to mitigate the threat of flooding. The project was built, with the bank's help Pariente's relatives did gain control of the company, and when the flood waters came several people were drowned and the entire development was ordered demolished. It is a function of Panamanian legal traditions and of the way that people like Toro think that none of the bankers or developers behind the disaster are being formally called to account for the deaths resulting from the construction costs they illegally avoided.

Then there was the spin control by lawyers, such as Rogelio Cruz suggesting that the Prados del Este housing development project was a loser anyway and for this reason Pariente would have no motive to use his position with the bank that lent the money for it to put his relatives in control. (Could be that Cruz has a client who needs no motives for what he does, or who just makes bad business decisions, but Pariente's dealings with the Prados del Este project are for the most part immortalized in bank documents.)

Meanwhile, Pariente lives in a special cell at the PTJ headquarters in Ancon, and that, too, has been the subject of public debate. Magaly Castillo of the Citizens Alliance for Justice noted that Pariente is not being held with a mainline jail population as are most inmates who are awaiting trial in this country (who in turn comprise most of Panama's inmates), and argued in El Siglo that if the former bank exec is being confined under better conditions due to the presumption of his innocence then all those being held pending trial deserve the same.

At a ceremony at which the keys to new homes were distributed to those displaced by the Prados del Este floods, Torrijos denied that his administration was being vindictive in the Pariente case, but said that "there is a real and concrete necessity to deliver justice for the Panamanian people."

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