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Also in this section:
Carnival 2006
Torrijos opens a new legislative session
Noriega defaults in torture case
The other Moscoso administration museum theft
Oscar Arias wins in Costa Rica
Panama News Briefs

The Museo Hermanos Arias Madrid in Penonome. Photo by Eric Jackson

The "other" museum heist

There was the notorious "Crime of the Centennial," an inside job in which political hacks of the Moscoso administration stole nearly 300 priceless artifacts from the gold room at the Reina Torres de Araúz Anthropology Museum. That case was mostly solved when a detective working on a credit card counterfeiting case stumbled across criminals trying to fence most of the stolen items. But several items remain missing and it turns out that our law enforcement agencies didn't consider it important --- or possibly were paid to consider it unimportant --- to provide INTERPOL with photos of the missing items.

Then there was the notorious diversion of aid from the government of Taiwan meant for a children's museum, which former First Lady Ruby Moscoso de Young (Mireya's sister) apparently channeled to favored individuals in form of exaggerated administrative salaries for a "private" foundation set up for that purpose. The investigations of that are more or less stymied, as the former president was apparently an accomplice, she's now a member of the Central American Parliament with diplomatic immunity, and past high court decisions (based on solidarity among the predators of the political class rather than on the law) have held that if a person with immunity from investigation and prosecution was part of a criminal conspiracy, those co-conspirators who have no official impunity obtaining through their association with a privileged hoodlum.

But no, this isn't about those cases, or about the Pérez Balladares administration scandals wherein the Panamanian consulate in New York was used as a clandestine gallery to show off looted Peruvian antiquities and the still unsolved inside theft of priceless sculptures from El Caño Archaeological Park.

This is about aid from the government of Spain intended to fund the museum shown above, which honors Harmodo and Arnulfo Arias, two brothers who both served as presidents of Panama. Former Cocle Governor Richard Fifer was charged early last year with converting Spain's $47,000 check for the museum to his own personal use. The Public Ministry and the courts won't release information about the case, but it appears that the case is still pending.

This, in turn, raises questions about the sincerity of President Torrijos's "zero corruption" campaign pledge.

Why is that? Because Torrijos and some of his cabinet ministers met with Fifer in the cabinet room of the presidential palace this past January for the specific purpose of promoting Richard Fifer's mining company, which for the past 18 years has not actually mined and sold minerals, but has done a brisk business selling securities on foreign stock exchanges.

Also in this section:
Carnival 2006
Torrijos opens a new legislative session
Noriega defaults in torture case
The other Moscoso administration museum theft
Oscar Arias wins in Costa Rica
Panama News Briefs