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Business & Economy Briefs

Brazilian hustler busted after years of controversy

by Eric Jackson

Mario Sampó, a Brazilian citizen and one of the owners of the Tempus Bank (see also Tempus Bank Montenegro and Tempus Account Center Corporation), was arrested on Tuesday, January 3 at Albrook and taken in for an indagatoria (formal questioning by a prosecutor for the purpose of trial evidence) in the case of an alleged $16 million swindle against Panamanian businessman José Manuel Echevers. After the interrogation the prosecutor ordered Sampó held in preventive detentiion. His lawyers have petitioned a circuit judge to set bail, but prosecutors and the private attorney for Echevers have objected to this on the grounds that the Brazilian is an international flight risk and because other than the case at hand there are several other complaints with potential criminal implications that have been filed with the Banking Superintendent.

Sampó has been a controversial figure on the Panamanian scene since at least 2003. In that year several foreign citizens complained that in the name of the Tempus Bank or the Tempus Account Center he and several associates promoted offshore financial services over the Internet, that they had deposited their money with these institutions, but when they tried to withdraw their money they were given various reasons why they could not be paid. At the time the Banking Superintendent and the Comision Nacional de Valores warned that neither the Tempus Bank nor the Tempus Account Centers were registered to do business in Panama, and it turned out that, despite claims of official status in Montenegro and Latvia, the "bank" didn't legally exist anywhere. At least one complaint was forwarded to the Attorney General's office, but at the time the occupant of that office notoriously would not prosecute anybody for using Panama as a base to defraud foreigners. At the time the prosecutor said that nothing could be done because the financial crimes legislation that required banks, brokerages and other financial institutions to be registered was not in effect at the time when the victims deposited their funds. However, fraud laws were in effect then and that legal angle was not pursued.

Tempus also set up several front companies here. One was the Sociedad de Ahorro y Prestamo para la Vivienda Mi Techo SA, which attempted to get into the Panamanian home loan market. Others included Panamerican Holding International, the Universal Financial Group Inc, the Tempus Account Center and the Grupo Arenas Panama Inc.

The latter company attempted to get a concession to privatize the state-owned ATLAPA convention center and had the support of the Brazilian government, but when the ties with Tempus Bank became known, the Moscoso administration cancelled the process and Brazil withdrew its backing from Sampó's group. Grupo Arena denied any connections with Tempus, but in a series of articles in El Panama America by Yolanda Sandoval and Melitza E. Solano C. the connections were shown in terms of shared officers and directors, shared offices and documents showing Tempus's ownership of its subsidiaries' stock.

At the time that the ATLAPA deal fell through --- September and October of 2003 --- Grupo Arena said it would sue the Panamanian government about it, but this threat was never carried out.

A couple of years later, José Manuel Echevers complained that he had pledged property worth some $16 million for a line of credit with Tempus Bank, lost the property after the bank transferred title to a third company and not received the promised credit. The complaint had originally been made with the Public Ministry when it was under José Antonio Sossa but the matter wasn't pursued. This past September Echevers filed private charges, and this time it appears that prosecutors are taking his side against Sampó.

So is the unstated prosecutorial policy of looking the other way when Panama is used as a base for frauds perpetrated against foreigners a thing of the past? Certainly one of the practitioners of this racket is in trouble, but the case that has landed him in jail is about an alleged fraud against a Panamanian.