Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Infamous pro-corruption law may be dropped

The National Assembly's Government Committee is slowly wading through a lengthy proposed new Code of Criminal Procedure (Codigo de Proceso Penal) and it appears at this early point that one of the most criticized incentives for public corruption may become a bad memory. The summary proof rule holds that to have a criminal investigation of a public official the person making the complaint must present complete and judicially admissible proof that a crime was committed and that the official accused did it with the complaint. However, when such proof is submitted, that is taken as proof that an investigation was improperly begun and thus that any further investigation is barred by the supposed violation of the public official's rights. The legislature has used this rule to reject all complaints about judicial corruption, and the courts and prosecutors have been hampered in many cases of rather flagrant corruption by executive and legislative branch officials. There are currently pending a number of cases against legislators in which the Supreme Court has been taking its time deciding whether to authorize criminal investigations.

FARC cash in Tico prof's house leads to probe here

A raid on a leftist university professor's house in Heredia, Costa Rica has turned up $480,000 in cash, and both Colombian and Costa Rican authorities say that this was a slush fund for the FARC guerrilla army's diplomatic and publicity work abroad. It is also claimed that the money was brought into Costa Rica overland from Panama, and this tends to confirm the long standing "conventional wisdom" that FARC maintains money laundering and other support apparatuses here.

Kidnappings up

There is a great fear among many Panamanians, particularly among businesspeople, about the "Colombianization" of life in this country. The massive investment of Colombian money, much of it apparently the proceeds of illegal activity, in Panama City real estate and businesses is one point of concern. Another is the rise of the kidnapping industry. In 2006 there were 13 kidnappings reported here. Now the government has announced that the now disbanded Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) recorded 29 kidnappings. Kidnapping for ransom is often not reported to police --- some families just pay the ransom and get on with their lives. The latest craze, the "kidnapping express," in which people are abducted and force to empty their bank accounts while being driven around by their abductors, is thought to be much more likely to be reported to police. Kidnapping for ransom is a big industry in Colombia, with the leftist FARC rebels far from the only gangsters participating in the racket. Whether or not Panama's enhanced kidnapping problem is directly derived from Colombian influence --- the evidence is mixed, as a few Colombians have been identified in such crimes here, but most of the perpetrators and suspects seem to be local folks --- many businesspeople here see the risk of abduction, like the risk of a business dispute being settled by a hit man, as a Colombian import.

PRD goons rob photojournalist's work

It was almost like the good old days when Labor Minister Benjamín Colamarco headed General Noriega's Dignity Battalions goon squad and National Assembly president Pedro Miguel González was a promising young tough guy with the dictatorship's youth wing. Appointed government officials aren't supposed to be politicking during working hours, but on Friday, March 7, Colamarco, a candidate for the PRD National Executive Committee in the following Sunday's elections had called in sick, pleading a throat ailment. Actually he was at the Plaza Paitilla Inn, having a breakfast meeting with indigenous delegates to the convention and was seen by La Prensa photographer Ana Rentería, who took photos of Colamarco engaged in his illegal campaign activities. She was accosted by three large men, who showed security ID --- they were bodyguards for Colamarco and legislator González --- and under some perverted color of "law" they held Rentería as an illegal private prisoner for about three hours and stole the memory chip from her camera. González says that he and his thug were only witnesses and didn't directly participate in the strong-arm robbery. The Colamarco thugs protested at the scene that they had some sort of license to rob because the political breakfast was private, and later Colamarco denied that they were his bodyguards. The Electoral Tribunal? Two of their three magistrates are PRD, so forget about any recourse to the election laws. Colamarco and González, by the way, were elected to the PRD's national leadership two days later. La Prensa, which is editorially aligned with the PRD, filed a complaint with the party.

Traad release ordered

Ricardo Traad, the former head of Panama's National Maritime Service (SNM) coast guard, was ordered released by Judge Silverio Rodríguez after a 10-hour hearing on February 26, but prosecutors are appealing on the one hand and bringing new charges on the other. The case arises from the Perseus V, which was arrested by the US Coast Guard in 2006 with a ton of cocaine aboard and then handed over to the SNM. Apparently as part of a US drug sting, another ton of coke was left aboard and that and the cargo of scrap metal aboard the vessel then went missing. The drug charges have been thrown out, leaving the prosecution with a theory that Traad received an enormous amount of money for the alleged sale of a relatively small amount of scrap metal in Mexico. The judge ruled that for such a minor crime Traad could no longer be held in preventive detention. The prosecutors are appealing, and meanwhile, as Traad lived well beyond his visible means of support, they're also bringing new charges against him.

Gloria Young held liable for misappropriating pickup

The Comptroller General Office's Directorate of Property Responsibility (DRP) has found former legislator Gloria Young civilly liable for the misappropriation of a $22,259.39 pickup truck. The Nissan Frontier was for the Centro de la Mujer Maltratada battered women's shelter in Puerto Armuelles, and apparently was and is used for that purpose. However, it was bought with public funds but registered under Young's name. The ex-legislator is appealing, saying that the mayor of Baru, Franklin Valdés, registered the Nissan in her name instead of in the municipality's name as it should have been, but that she never actually had the vehicle. Young, first elected to office from San Miguelito on the Papa Egoro ticket, was re-elected in 1999 as an Arnulfista and is related by marriage to the family of former President Mireya Moscoso. Young, a schoolteacher by profession, founded the country's first battered women's shelter, the Centro de Mujeres Maltratadas in San Miguelito, and as a legislator carried on a famous rivalry with her colleague from San Miguelito at the time, Balbina Herrera.

Lots of voting address changes

Voters who no longer live where they are registered to vote must change their voting address with the Tribunal Electoral by the end of April or lose their right to vote in the May 2009 elections. Already more than 90,000 voters have been stricken from the lists for various reasons, and as we saw in the internal PRD elections, where a vice mayor of Colon had been mistakenly disenfranchised, the ongoing mass purge of voters is not entirely a matter of ordinary administrative procedures. (Neither is the more than a year in advance deadline for address changes.) To check your voter registration, go to any Electoral Tribunal office or go online to http://www.tribunal-electoral.gob.pa. However, to change your voting address you will need to go to the Electoral Tribunal and show them one of the new digital cedulas, which means that you may have to go through the process of replacing an old polaroid ID card first. So far this year about 180,000 people have changed their voting addresses and there is an expectation of a late April rush.

Not much overseas voter registration

With an April 30 deadline looming for Panamanian citizens living abroad to register to vote in the May 2009 election, the Electoral Tribunal reports that only 1,373 people have signed up for the Foreign Resident Electors Register (RERE, by its Spanish initials). Any Panamanian citizen living abroad who has not acquired another citizenship (as distinguished from being born with multiple nationalities) can visit http://www.tribunal-electoral.gob.pa to fill out the forms to register. But the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal has erected a shifting set of obstacles in addition to having to be registered more than a year ahead of time. The latest is that they won't accept a valid Panamanian passport to register. Nor will they accept the cedulas that most Panamanians living abroad have --- one must have one of the new digital cedulas, which are only issued within Panama.

Ford: watch out for the left

Former Vice President and Union Patriotica leader Guillermo Ford, one of several 2009 opposition presidential hopefuls, warns that the hand of Hugo Chávez may be present in Panamanian political life. La Estrella reports that in a Union Club speech to the Kiwanis Club, Ford said that "You have to watch out for the left." He didn't get into the two current vice presidents' conflicting claims about whether the Venezuelans are or are not behind Panama's labor unrest. Ford, by the ideas he has long espoused the most conservative of the men who want to lead the opposition into the 2009 elections, noted that there will have to be an opposition alliance to beat the PRD. The left is fragmented and has no political party with ballot status, but probably accounts for about 10 percent of the potential electorate. The PRD has a disciplined base of about one-third of Panamanian voters. Assuming that the leftists are by and large not going to vote for either the PRD or the opposition and that regardless of any united slate Cambio Democratico's Ricardo Martinelli will run on his own if he doesn't get the backing of the other opposition factions, the strategy that Ford espouses has a reasonable chance of success but is far from a sure thing. But all of those assumptions can be broken in a number of ways --- by a business-oriented candidate making an overture (probably about a new constitution) that gains him substantial left support, by anti-PRD voters gravitating toward the opposition candidate who's in the best position to win as the election approaches, or by the PRD picking a candidate who can get substantial support beyond the party's ordinary base.

Vanguardia Moral loses members to the Panameñistas

The "Chame Pact," wherein former President Guillermo Endara (who has already won his Vanguardia Moral de la Patria party nomination for president) is supporting former banker Alberto Vallarino in the Panameñista Party's presidential primary, is having repercussions in both parties. Most immediately, about 2,000 members have left Vanguardia Moral, most of them to join the Panameñistas. Some of these are undoubtedly people who share Endara's affinity with Vallarino, but probably more of them are backing Juan Carlos Varela (of the liquor distilling Hermanos Varela family), whom polls indicate is the front runner in his party's contest. Former legislator Marco Ameglio (of the Bonlac dairy products family) appears to be running a distant third. Vallarino, the nephew of the late Arnulfo Arias, is probably the wealthiest of the Panameñista primary candidates, but because he was the recipient of a large special capital gains tax break when BANISTMO was sold to HSBC, and because he bolted from the Arnulfista ranks to run an unsuccessful third party campaign in 1999, has some problems with a lot of the party's rank-and-file membership. Meanwhile among the opposition in general eyebrows are being raised about Endara getting involved in another party's primary race.

Salazar boots Panameñistas out of fair in Portobelo

Political parties have traditionally campaigned at fairs around the country. However, Panama's Minister of Agricultural Development Guillermo Salazar expelled the Panameñista Party, which had rented a booth to sign up new party members at the February 29 - March 2 Expocostas fair in Nuevo Tonosi, Portobelo, from the fairgrounds. Salazar, who's also known for his moonlighting as the local representative of the mafia-linked Prime Forestry teak scam until the Swiss government shut it down, took recourse to the law, so he said, arguing that it's illegal to conduct political activities at fairs. Virgilio Correa, who's seeking a Panameñista nomination for a seat in the National Assembly, sought his own legal recourse by filing a complaint against Salazar with the Electoral Tribunal. However, the PRD holds two of the three seats on that panel and back during the canal expansion referendum campaign set its policy on such matters by failing to take action when "no" campaigners were arrested for legally passing out literature for their cause.

Electoral Tribunal bars party from expelling crook

Theoretically, the constitution that Panama inherited from the dictatorship gives a lot of power to the political parties. One of the specified powers is that if a legislator defies party discipline in the way he or she votes in the assembly, or violates party rules by getting involved in a scandal or otherwise, that deputy can be removed from the National Assembly by his or her party. Rogelio Alba, who was elected from Kuna Yala on the Liberal Nacional ticket, has been involved in more embarrassing incidents than any other deputy in this legislature, and after he had been caught smuggling liquor and cigarettes out of the Colon Free Zone without paying duty (for his constituents, Alba maintained), the party moved to kick him out of his elected post. But the Electoral Tribunal has held in favor of Alba and open corruption by turning down the party's move to expel him from the legislature. And the penal cases for that (and drug trafficking, abusing his legislator's tax break on automobile imports, and so on)? There are five complaints pending against Alba before the Supreme Court, which has declined to approve or disapprove petitions to lift his legislative immunity and allow criminal investigations. On that front, however, the high court's new presiding magistrate, Harley Mitchell, is demanding prompt resolution of the 55 pending petitions to lift the immunity of from investigation or prosecution of various members of the National Assembly and the Central American Parliament.

Add another Kuna Yala politician to the docket

Kuna Yala has two members of the National Assembly, both of whose actions are the subjects of petitions to lift their immunity and allow criminal procedures to be started against them. These legislators each have a suplente (alternate) and now one of these is also embroiled in scandal. Fausto Misselis González, the suplente for Panameñista deputy Enrique Garrido, was caught on February 21 along with various other persons in possession of 50 kilos of heroin, eight kilos of cocaine and an undisclosed amount of marijuana. The others are in jail, but Misselis is on the street while Supreme Court magistrate Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño considers the merits of Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez's petition to lift his immunity.

RP hosts regional tsunami alert summit

They don't happen very often, but when an earthquake happens in a maritime region it can be followed by a tsunami, a tidal wave that can bring far more death and destruction than the earthquake itself. However, such waves usually take time to get to the places where they crash ashore and the quakes themselves and the waves moving across the open water can be detected well before they get there by seismographs, buoys and satellites. (So what do you do when warned? Head immediately for higher ground!) Given those realities, maritime and disaster relief and prevention officials from 30 countries in the Caribbean and Central American region gathered in Panama on March 12 to design an international early warning system to save lives in the event of tsunamis.

No charges against architect's killer

There will be no negligent homicide or obstruction of justice charges brought in the October 18, 2007 shooting of architect Cristina María García Eleta by members the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) presidential guard and national intelligence service. A robbery at the Corozal office of the IDAAN water and sewer utility brought agents from the nearby SPI headquarters out with their guns drawn, and when one of the robbers attempted to flee using García as a hostage they opened fire, killing her and wounding her abductor. That sort of response to a hostage situation violates written police procedures and prompted a prosecutor's investigation. The SPI initially said that the robbers had shot García, which was quickly proven to be false by ballistics tests. Then the weapon used by the SPI in the killing went missing. Then, after it was found, tests indicated that it was probably the death weapon but it could not be shown conclusively, as it appeared that parts had been switched to avoid positive identification. Then, the SPI announced that it had lost or otherwise disposed of all of its spare parts for weapons. Now the prosecutor says he's charging the seven robbers for the homicide. This may be a difficult case because Panama doesn't have anything precisely like the Common Law's felony murder rule that finds one participating in felony that leads to a person's death guilty of murder no matter who actually did the killing. It was also announced that nobody from the SPI will be charged with or face further investigation for negligent homicide or tampering with evidence. García's family, through their attorney, is pursuing the matter with civil and criminal complaints against the government and various SPI officials.

Spain opens case against Rasfer

Spanish prosecutors have opened a case against chemical import/export firm Rasfer SA, which was an intermediate link along the international supply chain by which deadly diethylene glycol mislabeled as harmless medical-grade glycerin made its way from Chinese manufacturers into cough syrup mixed in the Social Security Fund's medicine lab and distributed to patients of Panama's public health care system. Officially the Torrijos administration, which denied the necessary funds for toxicology tests in most cases, will only admit that 115 people died from the poison but more than 700 poisoning allegations were filed and because of the president's budget constriction and the tendency for the toxic residues to decompose over time most of the suspected deaths could not be properly investigated. The questions pertaining to Rasfer are whether they had changed the labels on the chemicals (which were apparently altered several times along the supply chain) and whether that company or people connected with it were criminally negligent for not testing the plastic jugs's contents to verify that they were what it was claimed they were. If there are any grounds found to bring charges, then the Spanish courts will have to decide whether to extradite defendants to Panama or to try them in Spain.

School year starts with a few problems

Every year in March, some students will be prepared to return to schools that are not ready to receive them. On March 10, when the public school year began, this was again the case. This year seven school buildings that were being rehabilitated, mostly to remove disintegrating fiberglass or asbestos that posed a health hazard, proved totally unusable on the first day of classes. Other schools began without electricity or water, or with insufficient desks or other equipment. There are always some teaching positions that are unfilled at the beginning of the school year as well, but this time it seems to have been less of a problem than in the recent past.

Anti-tobacco law to go into effect April 23

Smokers, libertarians and ad agencies don't much like it, but as of April 23 it will cost more to smoke, there will be fewer legal opportunities to do so and no advertising to urge people to satiate their tobacco addictions with this or that brand. Other than the tobacco companies and their customers, it will be casinos, restaurants and nightclubs that have until now been allowed to have smoking sections that will be most affected.

Sanchiz to head Olympic Committee

On March 19 in a process that was in part boycotted and in part impugned --- although we shall see whether legal challenges will be filed --- Miguel Sanchiz, who heads Panama's basketball federation, was chosen to lead the Olympic Committee of Panama from 2008 to 2012. The former head of the Olympic Committee, Melitón Sánchez, was present at the meeting but did not vote. A slate headed by Julio Kenion, walked out of the meeting at the Hotel Roma, complaining that federations with a right to vote had been excluded. Of the 52 accredited votes, Sanchiz won 28. Only 11 of 29 federations in the national Olympic movement participated in the voting. For many years under Melitón Sánchez's leadership the national Olympic Committee gained a reputation for putting a higher priority on luxury travel by dignitaries than sending athletes to international competitions. That came to a head at the Athens Olympics, when government funds were spent on liquor for the dignitaries, sparking a series of legal and political battles. There followed rival claims to the committee's leadership, embezzlement scandals that are still before the courts and a suspension by the International Olympic Committee that must be sorted out if Panamanian athletes are to compete in Beijing.

Four pedestrians hurt by plane at Calzada Larga

The Civil Aviation Authority has banished flight school activities from Albrook to Calzada Larga, but meanwhile Housing Minister Balbina Herrara has been promoting Calzada Larga as a place for people with few means to build their houses. On March 7 the conflicting land uses became painfully apparent when an aviation student practicing takeoffs and landings in a Cessna 152 landing on the airstrip hit four kids who were riding bicycles there. Two of the children suffered critical head injuries. Both the aviation schools and the people in the neighborhood are complaining that the transfer of the flight school activities to Calzada Larga is untenable, but the Torrijos administration appears to be set on its policy.

The thugs that Torrijos lets in

A quarter-century ago, young Dutchman Martin Erkamps was part of a gang that kidnapped beer magnate Freddie Heineken and extorted a ransom for his release. With the proceeds of that crime he went on the run for nearly a decade --- until he was caught in Spain, driving in a drug caravan. Erkamps spent the next several years behind bars, and somehow when he got out he had money to invest. Ah, just the sort of immigrant that Martín Torrijos likes! The Torrijos administration gave Erkamps permanent resident status last year and now he's a real estate developer in Los Santos. His allegedly $500 million resort communty project, M&M Garden View in Las Tablas, is already generating complaints. More than a dozen US citizens who were dumb enough to buy from Erkamps without representation by their own reputable lawyer have found that they have paid for land that Erkamps didn't actually own.

Five cops busted for helping drug trafficker escape

On February 20 alleged Mexican drug trafficker Porfirio Arévalos Cuevas, also known as David Placencia Solís, escaped from La Joyita Penitentiary, where he was awaiting trial on major drug charges. He has been replaced in the prison system by five cops who are accused of helping him escape: National Police Captain Raúl Zambrano, Second Lieutenant Luis Rodríguez, Second Lieutenant Saúl Gutiérrez, Sergeant Mario Lezcano and Corporal Luis Urriola.

Darwins enter mixed pleas

Former UK prison official John Darwin, who faked his 2002 death and ended up moving to Panama with his wife until the scam fell apart late last year, has pleaded guilty to passport fraud and seven counts of obtaining money by false pretenses, but has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of money laundering. His wife Anne Darwin has pleaded not guilty to all of a string of charges lodged against her. The couple entered their pleas at a March 13 court appearance in Leeds, England. British prosecutors claim that the Darwins bilked insurance companies and others of at least $540,000, but from the assets that the couple amassed down here it appears that they had money from some other source than the combination of the alleged frauds and the sale of assets in the United Kingdom. If, as might reasonably be suspected, Mr. Darwin was laundering the proceeds of some underworld business whose principals he may have met in connection with his former job, he had a five-year lead on investigators during which to cover his financial tracks.

These briefs were compiled on March 21

News \| Economy \| Culture \| Opinion \| Lifestyle \| Science \| Outdoors Noticias \| Opiniones \| Calendar \| Archive \| Unclassified Ads \| Home	Volume 14, Number 5 March 9 - 22, 2008

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