opinion

Keep Colombian death squad
money out of Panama’s politics
by Eric Jackson

Yes, we all know that we should take anything that Colombian authorities say about what they found in a laptop computer with a boulder of salt. But still, when they say that they found the scheduling of a meeting between one David Murcia Guzmán and one Martín Torrijos Espino on a list of things to do in Murcia Guzmán’s lawyer’s laptop, that ought to raise more than eyebrows.

Murcia Guzmán, you might recall, is the formerly high-rolling 27-year-old Colombian whose DMG empire had all the outward appearances of a massive pyramid scam, but which is now reported in Colombian media to have been a money laundering scheme for at least $1 billion of ill-gotten funds amassed by the AUC paramilitary organization and its drug running partners in the Valle del Norte Cartel. Murcia Guzmán, nabbed in Panama and quickly expelled as an undesirable alien, now lives in a Bogota prison. The scandal swirling around him has touched Colombian judges, governors, senators, deputies and mayors, for the most part from President Álvaro Uribe’s political faction. It has also touched big business and the media in Colombia.

Unfairly touched? Perhaps. Allegations are just that and innocent until proven guilty is a good policy not just for the courts but for journalists as well.

But the DMG empire existed in at least six countries, including Panama, and it would be unreasonable to expect that, if the allegations of payoffs made in Colombia are true, that the modus operandi would be much different elsewhere. And then there were the palpably false pleas by top Torrijos administration figures that there was nothing that could be done under Panamanian law about DMG’s operations.

Simply put, there are circumstances that suggest that the AUC death squads’ fortune may have been used to bribe Panamanian public officials. There ought to be an investigation of this matter.

In Panama we just got a new Code of Criminal Procedure that eliminated the summary proof law, a notorious rule that prevented the investigation of a public official unless there was full proof that a crime was committed and that the official committed the crime attached to the complaint. Unless it was the complaining eyewitness’s affidavit saying something like “I saw the minister pull out a gun and shoot the guy,” any proof attached to the complaint was prima facie evidence that an illegal investigation had been conducted, and if there had been an illegal investigation then no case could proceed.

But if that Catch-22 is history, what about Catch-21, or Catch-23?

For example, was the payoff in the form of a campaign contribution, as has been alleged was the case in Colombia? In Panama we have campaign finance secrecy, and a magistrate of our discredited Electoral Tribunal recently declared that campaign donations from drug lords are not the election authorities’ concern.

More mundane considerations like an insufficient budget for prosecutors to do their jobs, not only with respect to public corruption but also to fight the wave of robberies, swindles, assaults and murders that’s crashing down upon us, come into play.

Yes, the Public Ministry has opened a money laundering case in the DMG affair, but it seems that it’s highly dependent on what information that authorities in other countries can uncover and pass along. But no, it’s not likely that Panamanians will go to the polls next May with much information about whether the balance of our public affairs is being tipped by the finger of Colombian death squad money.

Meanwhile, there are other, not well demonstrated, allegations that the leftist government of Venezuela is bankrolling Balbina Herrera’s presidential campaign. If there’s any truth to that, and if there is any reality behind the suspicion that right wing Colombian paramilitary money has made its way in to Panama’s political life, those two things wouldn’t balance so as to cancel each other out. They would instead add up to a frightening suggestion that Panama is, in Washington parlance, a “failed state” that has fallen under the control of criminal elements that a genuine government has a duty to suppress.

We really do need to find out the extent of DMG’s influence on Panamanian public officials. The viability of our democratic institutions is in play here.