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Business & Economy Briefs
 

ARI's death throes neither quiet nor dignified

by Eric Jackson, largely from other media

From the start of his administration, President Torrijos has insisted that the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) would die a natural death at the end of its term on December 31 of this year. A lucrative source of perks for years, the PRD hacks lining up for the job of ARI administrator at the change of administration last year were discouraged, and in the end Julio Ross Anguizola was hired and given a mandate by the president to wind up the authority's affairs.

But Ross's bosses in the ARI board of directors, and the administrative staff he inherited, had other ideas.

The board, for its part, has repeatedly issued statements, and bought expensive full-page ads in the daily newspapers to publicize many of them, arguing the impossibility of closing ARI on schedule. One such, which appeared in the Sunday papers on October 2, over the signatures of the University of Panama's self-styled “Rector Magnifico” Gustavo García de Paredes (who is the ARI board chairman) and his colleagues, recounted the brilliance and specialized expertise of the people at ARI and declared that “ARI is not prepared to close its operations nor to transfer its tasks to the national government.” It demanded an extra two years of existence for the authority.

On the inherited administrative side, for example, when this reporter learned that Gilbert Straub, the former Robert Vesco organization gangster who delivered Richard Nixon's bribe money to the Watergate burglars was claiming to be a principal in the Tucan gated golf course community into which the old Horoko golf course has been converted and that the man who denied this relationship and presented himself as the developer in fact was using an email address via Straub's company, the PR flacks at ARI not only ducked the questions, they kept them from getting to Ross and funneled the questions to the Tucan promoters instead.

(The land for the Tucan project was transferred in four different parcels, some of which were re-transferred. The Panama News has been able to determine that part of this land went for a stated price of $31 per square meter, which most real estate people whom we consulted said was very low. We have heard other allegations with respect to this real estate deal that we have not been able to confirm. We may revisit the Tucan story.)

Ross set about laying off ARI's staff, starting with dozens of politically connected lawyers. He went public with information that most of the concessionaires who had actually built projects at Amador have not made the required payments to ARI. (Those who falsified claims that they had the financing and got concessions for projects that never happened is another scandal.) He publicized sordid tales of wasteful spending, of big entourages that included even the authority's receptionists heading to Europe on ARI's dime and coming back with nothing but large expenses to show.

So on September 29, the Rector Magnifico and his colleagues on the ARI board fired Ross. Or at least, they passed a resolution purporting to do so.

President Torrijos, through Minister of the Presidency Ubaldino Real, indidated that he'd think about it. Meanwhile, speaking for the administration, Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro said that there would be no backtracking on the decision to shut down ARI.

Two major questions remain unaddressed in public by the Torrijos administration.

First, there are the fates of ARI's employees. Their selected leaders are still lobbying to get the authority's life extended, but now the talk is shifting to whether along with functions and properties being transferred to other governmental entities, ARI workers will get jobs doing the same things they have been doing under the new structure.

Second, in light of a history of corruption, inefficiency and frivolous spending by ARI under both Arnulfista and PRD administrations, there is the question of whether the Comptroller General's office will conduct a post-closure audit. Presuming that such an audit is performed, then questions would arise about whether various matters will be referred to the Public Ministry for legal action.