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Panama News Briefs

Fate catching up with the Mireyista durodollars lady

by Eric Jackson, from other media

Dalvis Xiomara Sánchez Vergara was once an obscure member of Panama's lower middle class. For many years she was a clerical worker at one of the US military bases. She and her husband (now ex-) lived a modest lifestyle in a modest home. When Mireya Moscoso came to power, she got a job as an administrative secretary in the Ministry of the Presidencia.

Then one day in 2002, Dalvis Sánchez filed a most unusual complaint. She said that more than $35,000 in cash had been stolen from the place where she kept it --- her freezer --- and that she suspected that some men doing some work in her house were responsible. A police investigation quickly confirmed those suspicions, recovered the money, and sent the men on their way to prison.

But people asked: “How does a secretary come to have such a large amount of cash on hand?” and “Why would someone keep such a sum in such an insecure place as a freezer?”

Her life's savings, Sánchez answered the first query, and a deep mistrust of banks related to General Noriega's freezing of accounts during the ruinous US economic sanctions that preceded the 1989 invasion was her response to the second.

There was a great hue and cry, there were demands for an investigation of unjust enrichment, and wags, combining the known facts of the case with the Panamanian concept of home-style popsickles --- duros --- coined the term “durodólares” to describe the affair.

At the time Panama had a pro-corruption attorney general, José Antonio Sossa, and as expected there was no investigation worthy of the name. And as Moscoso was leaving office, Sánchez was building a sumptuous mansion on the beach in San Carlos's Costa Esmeralda neighborhood.

Whatever protective understanding may have been reached between the outgoing Mireya Moscoso and the incoming Martín Torrijos, its protections did not extend to lowly secretaries.

Meanwhile, a bitter ex-husband was making public claims that there were no life savings in an amount that would have put $35 grand in the freezer, let alone to build a house estimated to cost in excess of $300,000. It's always wise to take the declarations of exes with a large grain of salt, but the outward “before” and “after” affectations of wealth do tend to corroborate his tale.

The Supreme Court, itself awfully understanding of public corruption and usually quite solicitous of the rights and privileges of its practitioners, had meanwhile held that prosecutors couldn't initiate cases of inexplicable enrichment while in public office, which has been a crime here since shortly after Panama signed the Inter-American Anti-Corruption Convention that requires its criminalization. Such cases, it was held, had to start in an audit in the Comptroller General's office.

Unfortunately for the durodollars lady, Dani Kuzniecky is unlike his predecessor Alvin Weeden, and the new Comptroller referred the case to the Office of Patrimonial Responsibility (DRP), which proceeded to audit Ms. Sánchez's finances.

The audit found that Mireya's former secretary had spent at least $383,472.37 more than could be explained by the sum of her income while in public office and the assets she had beforehand. Thus the DRP issued an order freezing that amount of the durodollars lady's assets. The order is being appealed.

And now that the Comptroller General's office has done its audit, the case will be referred to the Public Ministry for further investigation and probable criminal prosecution. There is a further chance that this case could be a prosecutorial foot in the door to pursue a much wider range of corruption at the highest level of the Moscoso administration.

The durodollars drama has been a long-running affair and won't be quickly resolved. However, it already has come to represent a certain principle. The thing about duros is that they're sweet while they last, but in the long run, particularly when exposed to fresh air and the light of day, they tend to melt.