On October 10 the Junta de Control de Juego (JCJ, or Gambling Control Board) quietly moved to close Lucky Bingo and seize its equipment. Soon the gambling establishment was in court and by the last week in November it convinced the Supreme Court to agree to hear a constitutional challenge to the board's action. Attorney José Antonio Ventura announced the court's decision, which did not suspend the JCJ order, in a medium likely to reach a lot of that downscale establishment's customers, the gory sensationalist tabloid La Critica.

But it may not have been so wise for Lucky Bingo to call attention to its case. The board went on a publicity counter-offensive in the reliably pro-government La Prensa, and now it seems that even if the high court can be bribed to let the establishment off the hook its reputation has been so thoroughly trashed that it would have a hard time going back into business.

· Lucky Bingo alleged as part of its promotional efforts, that it had paid prizes to actor Leonardo DiCaprio and several other prominent international artists. It seems that the claim is false, which would be a violation of gambling laws. But were it true, that too would violate regulations designed to protect gamblers' privacy;

· Lucky Bingo was operating without license, as its gambling concession had expired in 2002;

· Lucky Bingo ran certain machines that allowed the operators to know ahead of time the winning numbers, a highly illegal practice because it allows the sale of winning cards with the advance knowledge that they are such.

Indeed it could. It seems that erstwhile “offshore asset protection guru” Marc Harris, now and for at least the next decade or so a resident of the US federal prison system for his money laundering activities, owns at least a 13.7 percent stake in Lucky Bingo (depending on how many of its 1,000 shares the company sold), which he bought in 1998 for some $1.34 million.

Harris, a one-time wunderkind in Florida Republican circles and manager in that state of Alexander Haig's ill-fated 1988 presidential campaign, fled to Panama after the state of Florida indefinitely suspended his CPA license for purporting to audit his own company and passing of the result as an independent review. Here he founded The Harris Organisation with former US secret operations man Larry Gandolfi and (at the time) South African consul Ken Darlington as his closest aides. Harris also promoted a supposed fund for Americans to invest in Cuba with which the Castro government would have nothing to do, under circumstances that suggest that it was some sort of sting operation on behalf of the US government to identify American citizens disposed to violate the US trade embargo. Harris advocated an “octopus” network of front companies to hide assets from creditors and tax collectors, affected a luxurious lifestyle and soon acquired a certain amount of notoriety and a crowd of hangers-on.

In 1998 Harris's entourage included then-legislator Balbina Herrera, and until the office changed hands about a year ago he enjoyed the protection of former Attorney General José Antonio Sossa.

But even with the protection of a pro-corruption procurador, Harris earned a reputation for stealing from his clients. While he would previously sweep into TGI Friday's in Marbella with a crowd of acolytes and be swooned over by the greedy young chicas plasticas there, it got the point when he'd come in with a couple of bodyguards everybody would move away.

Then Harris's friends in the PRD lost control of the government, Mireya's people wanted a bigger cut of the shrinking action than the PRD ever took and soon the National Securities Commission of Panama moved in to declare The Harris Organisation and its subsidiaries to be illegal unlicensed securities brokerages. Harris fled to Nicaragua and bribed officials there to give him citizenship, but just before those papers came through the Managua government extradited him to the United States to face the charges that eventually got him a 17-year sentence.

A number of Harris's associates carried on living in his string of apartments and driving his fancy cars around Panama. Gandolfi and Darlington, however, were arrested for arms trafficking earlier this year and are now in living in jail rather than in apartments that Marc Harris owns but which are registered in other people's names.

Many of Harris's henchmen were still close to the PRD and one of his lawyers, Max Hidalgo, did run, albeit unsuccessfully, in a PRD legislative primary.

But that was then and this is now, and since his imprisonment few prominent Panamanians want to admit any connection with Harris. Especially not a gambling establishment that's in trouble with the law, because for a change the Panamanian government might just invoke its rule against people with criminal records holding stakes in establishments with gambling licenses. Attorney Ventura has declined to answer reporters' questions about his client's connection with Marc Harris.

The lawyer did, however, file a criminal defamation complaint against Cortizo. In announcing this, he didn’t specifically deny the Marc Harris connection or allege that the Lucky Bingo stock certificate in Harris’s name published in La Prensa was a forgery, but instead accused the JCR official of violating some sort of confidentiality.

Harris left behind dozens of unpaid employees when he fled to Nicaragua, and these people have been battling in court to recover what assets are left of The Harris Organisation and its various components. Were Lucky Bingo a going concern, the JCJ's revelations might have been good news for them. But it seems that they now have a claim to 13.7 percent of little or nothing.

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