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Panama News Briefs

Former police chief's claims about drug lord's empire prompt a flurry of high profile denials

Rayo Montaño's empire

by Eric Jackson, from other media

A lot of politicians are furious at El Panama America these days. Some of them are even a lot more angry at Eduardo Herrera, the former director of the National Police.

Herrera was accused of trying to foment a coup against Guillermo Endara in December of 1990, and thrown into a jail cell at the National Maritime Service's Naos Island lockup with a Colombian named Alberto Torres, who found himself incarcerated over a drug-related matter. The cellmates struck up a long-standing friendship that continued after they were released.

Now Torres finds himself accused of being one of the principal front men for alleged drug lord Pablo Rayo Montaño, and Herrera finds himself called as a witness about the connections and activities of his friend. El Panama America obtained information about Herrera's sworn declaration to prosecutors, and it's a potential blockbuster, if any substantial part of the hearsay therein can be corroborated.

Herrera said that his friend, who in the ordinary course of things should have been deported from Panama like any other foreign drug suspect, cultivated friendships with many leading politicians and through these contacts pulled the strings to normalize his immigration status here. Among the people Herrera said that Torres said he befriended were former President Mireya Moscoso, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, legislator and former Portobelo Mayor Nelson Jackson, Supreme Court magistrate and former legislator Alberto Cigarruista and former legislator Abelardo "Lalo" Antonío.

Not all the allegations in Herrera's testimony were hearsay, however. He said that he saw Torres and Cigarruista together in a restaurant.

Moreover, there are certain circumstances that add a certain amount of weight to the hearsay that Herrera passed on to prosecutors. It is known, for example, that Pablo Rayo Montaño's organization became the largest landowner in Portobelo while Jackson was mayor of that municipality, accumulating some 10 kilometers of beachfront and a number of luxury homes. One might reasonably believe that Jackson must have known something about rich Colombians buying up the beachfront in his district and thus have been put on notice that something might have been odd.

Through a press spokesman Navarro blasted Herrera for irresponsible gossip, Moscoso denied that she knows Rayo Montaño. Other politicians named have been guarding their silence.

What about getting to the source of the hearsay? Police and prosecutors in several countries would dearly like to do that, but Alberto Torres went underground as soon as he learned that law enforcement people were asking questions about him. According to El Panama America, he may have learned this from Eduardo Herrera.

Meanwhile, the list of properties seized because they were allegedly owned or controlled by the Rayo Montaño organization continues to grow, and when one considers the political ties of the principal owners and managers of some of this country's leading banks the seizure raise yet more questions. Prosecutors have frozen 94 accounts in 14 banks, most of them in Banistmo, Banco General, Banco Cuscatlan, Banco Continental and HSBC. It seems that someone had an inkling that the law was approaching, because by the time that the accounts were frozen most of them had been emptied or closed. This in turn raises more suspicions that one or more ways the Rayo Montaño group had infiltrated the law enforcement agencies that were on their trail.

So far 60 companies are under investigation, several of them involved in one way or another with maritime transportation or real estate. There have been 35 real estate properties seized, about half of them obtained from the old Interoceanic Regional Authority, another governmental institution. Fleets of motor vehicles and boats have also been confiscated.

The things described above are just the assets in Panama. The Rayo Montaño group is alleged by law enforcement authorities to have moved 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every month and to have laundered the proceeds of this business in at least six countries. Rayo Montaño himself was arrested in Brazil as part of the multinational Twin Oceans drug raids.