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Panama News Briefs

Gang war highlights RP, US government corruption
by Eric Jackson, from other media

'Yes, he was one of our rogue elements --- but he doesn't work with us anymore.' We'd hear a lot more of that if access to the people who run the "War on Drugs" were not almost entirely restricted to the most obsequious of so-called journalists, especially in the United States. But these days in Panama City, as a bloody feud unfolds between a Santa Ana drug gang calling itself El Pentagono (notice whom they admire enough to name themselves after) and another outfit headed by a former DEA informant and notorious beneficiary of former President Mireya Moscoso's largesse, those sorts of words (not a quotation, by the way) are about the best face that two countries' law enforcement might be able to put on a truly embarrassing situation.

The gang headed by former DEA informant David Viteri Ruedas and its rival El Penagono are not really where the big-time corruption money comes from.

For a cop, a prosecutor, a judge, a general or a president, the jackpot is to be found in dealings with the big multinational criminal organizations, the kind that have been known to use custom manufactured submarines to move their multiton cargoes from one country to the next, the folks who consistently get most of their contraband into the United States untouched. These people certainly would not be able to do this on a regular basis without the substantial purchased cooperation of US officials.

('Prove it!' you may shriek in all your patriotic indignation. Well, such corruption has been proven from time to time in US courts of law, even if it's true that there are a lot of honest public officials, almost certainly the great majority, who don't deserve to be tarred with a broad-brushed smear of corruption. But quite frankly, if you believe that the frequent corruption of people in the American legal system is not an integral part of conducting business in the world's number one market for the consumption of illegal stupefacients, you're just downright naive.)

Anyway, the gangsters who are the subject of this story are not those sorts of drug barons. They're the tumbadores, the small-time vicious punks who rob their peers, and sometimes the major drug organizations, and market the loot on the street or to low-level dealers who work the retail market. But even to do that, they must cultivate a lower class of corrupt public official, the pond scum around the deep well of corruption on which organized crime thrives.

As in, police who rent out their uniforms, badges, paraphernalia and even sometime their patrol cars to gangsters, so that the latter can stage supposed raids on their rivals' drug caches, making off with the valuable contraband. As in, police who can be hired to tip the balance in wars between gangs over drug selling turf. And in David Viteri's case, a former president of Panama and a man who now sits on the Supreme Court, who issued a commutation so outrageous that there was a public outcry and it had to be rescinded.

(How do we know about this sort of police involvement with tumbadores? For one thing, some cops have been convicted for it. For another, in raids on drug gangs there have occasionally been seizures of badges, uniforms, guns and other equipment from law enforcement stockpiles.)

The latest chapter in the gang war saga had two El Pentagono hit men, one 18 years old and the other 15, looking to earn five grand on a contract to kill Viteri. At least that's the way La Prensa reported it, citing law enforcement sources claiming to have learned that from the minor's confession.

On March 16 Viteri and his entourage were on an auto parts shopping excursion on Via España and left their two cars, a Lexus and a Toyota 4x4 Sequoia, parked in front of the Mini Max restaurant, with Jhonny "El Dominicano" Pozo Córdoba at the wheel of the former. Both cars were registered in the name of Viteri's girlfriend Krizna Aronategui Muñoz, who is the sister of Pozo Córdoba's wife. At the wheel of the Toyota was Aron Lewis McClean, a retired National Police lieutenant who worked as a bodyguard for the Viteri gang. Inside a nearby store looking at auto parts were Viteri, Pozo Córdoba's wife and one Alexander Alberto Justiniani.

The latter had been named as a suspect in the January 2003 gangland hit of Manuel Ciervides, who was Panama's consul in Guayaquil during the Moscoso administration --- a case with interesting implications which remains unsolved --- and with whom police and prosecutors wanted to talk concerning the fate of a Colombian man whose murdered corpse was found in a car parked on Calle Alberto Navarro in El Cangrejo.

While Viteri, Mrs. Pozo and Justiniani were shopping, the two teenagers from El Pentagono crept up on the Lexus, apparently mistaking Pozo Córdoba for Vitieri. According to police accounts cited by several news organizations, the 15-year-fired two shots from a 9 millimeter pistol into Pozo's head, killing him instantly. The hit men fled, tried unsuccessfully to hijack a car driven on Via España by a woman who succcessfully resisted, and then managed to commandeer a cab and flee up Via Argentina.

Up Via España a Transito cop heard the shots and proceeded to the scene on his motorcycle. Lewis stepped out of the Toyota and Justiniani came running out of the store and both opened fire on the fleeing teenagers. That fire was returned by the young hit men, causing some panic among Via España drivers who were caught in the middle of the crossfire. In the exchange Justiniani was wounded and took a taxi to San Fernando Hospital, where police later arrested him.

The transito officer, with assistance from a retired cop who happened upon the scene on his motorcycle, gave chase to the taxi bearing the hit men through Cangrejo and stopped it near the Jap Jap chicken restaurant, where the two teenagers were arrested.

Meanwhile, Viteri walked away, hailed a cab and took off in the other direction, Lewis retrieved a briefcase from the Lexis and drove away in the Toyota (which was later found abandoned) and Mrs. Pozo was left at the scene, in a state of hysteria over the remains of her husband.

So what's this all about?

According to some published reports, it goes back to the 1997 case in which police seized 100 kilos of cocaine from Colombian drug traffickers but only 7 of these were turned in as evidence, the rest of it making its way into the hands of Viteri's gang. Viteri was tried but acquitted of drug trafficking with respect to the other 93 kilos, but prosecutors appealed and the appellate judges found him guilty and sentenced him to five to 10 years in prison. Less than two years later Mireya Moscoso and her frequent date at the time, then Minister of Government and Justice and now Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora, commuted Viteri's sentence to time served, but there was such an uproar, including from the US Embassy, that the commutation was rescinded. In the end, Viteri walked out of El Renacer Penitentiary near Gamboa having served only 14 months of his sentence. But if the Panamanian government was done with Viteri, the Colombians who lost their 100 kilos of coke to Viteri's gang were not ready to say the same, and hired El Pentagono to get revenge, so one version goes.

Other published reports have it as a simple gang war for drug selling turf, which started in earnest last June when Viteri's thugs killed El Pentagono leader Alex Mole in a Rio Abajo hit. The following month El Pentagono responded by killing Viteri's cousin Isaying Sing. Then the day before all the violence on Via España, Mole's successor at the helm of El Pentagono, Darío Guerrero, was gunned down on Santa Ana's Calle 17.

And what does all of this have to do with the state of Panamanian journalism? Well, if the police can't get ahold of David Viteri, TVN news did. In an exclusive on-air interview, the Mottas' television station gave air time to the former DEA informant and prominent gangster, who vowed revenge against El Pentagono for the hit against his friend Jhonny Pozo Córdoba.