Blocking Via España, much to the consternation of morning drivers.
The Panamanian way of arguing with the government
photos by Kermit Nourse
February 15 was a payday, with added numbers of people driving downtown to do banking or shopping. It was also the 25th anniversary of a dispute that began shortly before the 1989 US invasion. Workers for the old state-owned IRHE electric company and INTEL phone company were not paid their 13th month salaries back then — the Panamanian wage system gives workers an extra month’s pay per year, in two semi-annual installments — and after the invesion many were fired and others told that they would be eventually paid. They never were and in the late 1990s the utilities were privatized, leading to more job losses. The privatization laws had it that the new buyers would assume the obligations of the old government companies but by and large they never did. They didn’t pay the 13th month arrears, and sent both current but mostly former workers to the government to collect — which sent them to the companies to collect. Now it’s a quarter century after the last IRHE and INTEL arrears were accrued and the former employees want their money. Everyone points in a different direction or tells them to just accept their loss, but in the Panamanian political culture that’s an invitation to block the street unless and until some solution, or promise of a solution, is forthcoming.
As you may see, the inconvenienced drivers were not amused.
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Show a Panamanian who wants Donald Trump to solve the Odebrecht scandal for Panama and you will have pointed out somebody who does not want to see justice done for Panamanians.
The United States has and uses a veto in the United Nations. The United States dominates the Organization of American States. Handing the problem to either of those organizations is to hand it to the United States.
The president of the United States is a vicious white racist with a long history of mafia ties. He ran for office on a platform of contempt for all Latin Americans. At present he is harboring in the United States Ricardo Martinelli and Alejandro Toledo, both former Latin American presidents who each took huge bribes from Odebrecht. President Trump has his presence in Florida, where Odebrecht paid off such politicians as Jeb Bush and Xavier Suarez and received huge public works contracts, but we have never heard one peep from Trump about that situation.
Yes, there are Americans inside and outside of Panama, dual citizens and those whose sole nationality is US, who would be able and willing to help. Yes, much of Latin America is similarly caught in this pervasive international scandal and many sincere and capable people in Panama and our sister republics in the region who would work together to address the many problems created by this monumental criminal enterprise.
When it’s useful and it doesn’t compromise our national interests, Panama should accept help from its friends, and likewise lend assistance to our friends in need. Unfortunately, the spirit of mutual assistance among neighbors in search of justice has been lacking in our government.
But this is our problem. Panamanians from all walks of life need to make the sacrifices, do the work and run the risks to cure the evils that have given us the Odebrecht scandal. The facile solution of letting the Americans take care of it is no solution at all. Panama is an independent nation and it’s time for Panamanians to act according to that principle.
Uuuuh — foo-BALL!
The military officer who carries “the football” — the satchel from which a world-ending nuclear war might be launched — for President Trump has been photographed and identified in the world press. Perhaps that will require his replacement.
It was a security gaffe, every bit as serious as Hillary Clinton’s celebrated private email server. It’s the sort of thing that’s forthcoming from an administration of demagogues and dumb jocks.
Bear in mind…
I used to dread getting older because I thought I would not be able to do all the things I wanted to do, but now that I am older I find that I don’t want to do them.
Nancy Astor
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Emiliano Zapata
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …”
Isaac Asimov
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MIREN secretary general Juan Jované talks to the non-corporate press. Archive photo by MIREN.
We have to eradicate corruption
without foreign intervention
by the Independent Movement for National Refoundation (MIREN)
Panama is a sovereign country, such that we, its citizens, are obliged to fight tenaciously to combat corruption that’s caused by a system that puts lucre and rapine before the welfare of the population. Our problems should be resolved by Panamanians. We can’t pretend that institutions that have offended our country, like the OAS, or with their rigged dialogues have deceived our population, like the UN Development Program has, can now appear as our means of salvation.
We need to unite our people to refound the nation — this is our only road to a decent country. An independent commission of Panamanians of probity who are committed to national sovereignty should be constituted, and they might use international assistance.
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Stealth banking: go to their website and try to find out who actually owns or until the recent government invention ran this bank. Photo from their website.
FPB Bank and brokerage: the Odebrecht
scandal hits Panama’s banking district
by Eric Jackson
At the end of the business day on Friday, February 10, the Banking Superintendency of Panama ordered the takeover of BNP Bank Inc. In tandem with that the Securities Markets Superintendency of Panamasuspended the bank’s brokerage license. The reason latergiven to Telemetro Newsby the secretary general of the Banking Superintendency, Gustavo Villa, was that the bank was linked to the monumental Lava Jato scandal that began in Brazil but has now spread to many countries. Villa said that given the circumstances it would be too risky to allow a voluntary liquidation, that the most prudent thing was to appoint someone in whom the superintendency has confidence to take over while deliberations and possibly litigation ensues about what will happen to the bank.
The bank is relatively tiny in the scheme of things, with some $134 million reportedly on deposit and a stated capitalization of $13 million. The intervening authorities will have to verify and quantify before it would be possible to let people recover their money in bank or brokerage accounts.
Prudent investors and depositors would have already run away from the bank with their money. The institution could have been noted in thePanama Papers revelationsof early 2016. The bank was mentioned early on in the raucous and still ongoing relatedscandal about Maltese public officials’ covert offshore financial dealings. Also early in 2016, the banking superintendency here issued an opinion — a warning, really — that said that it was acceptable for FPB Bank to rely on the Brazilian firm Serasa Experian to vet their Brazilian banking clients, but it was not OK for the bank to just insert notes in their files saying that said customers checked out with the Serasa Experian in lieu of inserting the actual reports from that company.
The big red warning flag came last July, when Brazilian police and prosecutors, looking for evidence in a bribery and bid rigging scandal involving the construction centered conglomerate Odebrecht and the Braskem chemical company that was a partnership between the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras oil company and Odebrecht, stumbled across records referring to both the Panama-based multinational law firm Mossack Fonseca and to FPB Bank. Brazilian authorities quickly concluded that both the law firm and the bank were running money laundering operations. Panama was promptly informed but the government and legal system here took no immediate action.
The president and legislature in Panama had, at the time, just passed a law with a provision that whatever criminal activities that foreign courts might find, none of their judgments would affect any company’s standing to bid for or hold contracts with the Panamanian government. It was anOdebrecht protection law and widely said to be that at the time.
What Brazilian law enforcement people say that they found and heard where contradictory stories calling into question the relationship between Mossack Fonseca and the FPB Bank — the law firm signing up clients for the bank, the bank signing up clients for Mossack Fonseca, and each saying that they recruited their own clients and if those folks decided to do business with the other company it was those clients’ independent choice. There were 44 anonymous companies organized by Mossack Fonseca with accounts at FPB, with the Brazilian police having encountered the situation in the first place because some of those companies had been used by Odebrecht or its affiliated companies or persons to move money that were believed to be for the purpose of bribery. It was easy enough for Brazilian law enforcement to see a crime, because the bank is not registered to do business in Brazil, but there it was, signing up clients and helping them set up shell companies to conceal their assets, all in violation of Brazilian law.
But would somebody doing his or her due diligence about FPB Bank Inc have had to pay attention to the news to see warning flags? On the surface, the bank is anonymously owned and run. The closest their website gets is the statement that:
The Bank is supported by the entrepreneurial group of its stockholder, with more than forty years of experience in the financial market, who is part of the second generation of a Brazilian family of bankers known for exalting and sharing such values as long-term commitment, responsibility, ethics and the search for excellence.
Ignore the glaring omissions on the bank’s website and go back to the news and you may dig up references to a Brickell Group as the family of companies of which FPB Bank is a part. In a 2013 announcement by the semi-official Panamanian ANP news service, you might see some names affiliated with the bank: they were opening a new office in Panama City and on hand were bank president Eduardo Pinheiro, bank general manager José Paulucci and, as a special dignitary for the occasion, one Maílson Ferreira da Nóbrega.
Nóbrega was the Brazilian finance minister of the late 1980s who oversaw runaway inflation, which he unsuccessfully tried to control with austerity policies. He’s a man of the political right and a mover and shaker in the Brazilian high finance scene that has been moved and shaken by scandal.
Look up Pinhiero and Paulucci and you find the two names associated, but at first glance neither in Panama nor Brazil. Their LinkedIn pages and various business websites place them in the US state of Florida, in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area. They have Brickell Management Services Inc, a Miami consulting company that claims just six employees, in common. They also have FPB Bank, which was unsuccessfully sued in Florida courts by a Mr. Cardsoso, whom they signed up as a loan guarantor in Florida for a Brazilian tourism company that went belly-up. The court said that FPB is a Brazilian bank and that the contract had a dispute resolution agreement specifying Antigua as the venue for any litigation, so that while Florida might have jurisdiction, it was inconvenient — forum non conveniens in US legal Latin — to hear the case in Florida. Such payments made on that disputed loan were made “to an FPB Bank affiliate in Miami.” Might that have been Pine Bank, of 1001 Brickell Bay Drive? Paulucci was that bank’s president and CEO. In 2006 he came to that institution from a job running the Israeli firm Bank Leumi operations in Florida, and quickly Pine Bank was hit with acease and desist orderby the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which accused Pine Bank of violating various anti-money laundering provisions of the federal Bank Secrecy Act. At least six other South Florida banks were hit with similar orders at the time.
Anonymous ownership, apparently absentee management — a strange bank with which to do business, except if there is some special purpose.
And what’s in a name? “Brickell” is an upscale part of Miami and its name is on many a company, most prominently Brickell Group Construction LLC. There is The Brickell Group SA in Buenos Aires, a construction company incorporated in Argentina in 2007. Brickell is the name of a Brazilian kitchenware company. No obvious and certain relationships between these companies and the ones associated with Pinhiero and Paulucci come up in a quick online search. But then, construction and household goods made of plastic in Brazil? One might imagine some business ties with Odebrecht and its Braskem joint venture.
What about FPB? In Hong Kong the First Pacific Bank that uses those initials. FPB Bank Inc in Panama is just over 10 years old, while the bank in Hong Kong, since sold, was the property of FPB Bank Holding Company Limited, company registered in Bermuda in 1993.
“Mirror companies,” upstart firms taking on the same or similar names of better known companies elsewhere in the world, are legal in Panama and are one of the telltale indicators of possible fraud. Due diligence that finds a researched firm that mirrors somebody older and better known tells a prudent investor to run away.
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A large poster in the national bus terminal, about a major public work in progress.
Bone of contention
note and photo by Eric Jackson
On Friday, February 10, members of the SUNTRACS construction workers union, whose leaders are part of the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29), along with other groups in that political group — the Revolutionary Student Front (FER-29), the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (FRENADESO) and the Broad Front for Democracy political party (FAD) — blocked streets in the metro area and some other parts of Panama. It was billed as a protest against corruption but this faction of the left has had little to say about Odebrecht as the national and international bribery scandal has been brewing.
So what’s THAT all about? Odebrecht is a conglomerate but at the center of it is one of the world’s largest construction companies. For their public works projects here — under great suspicion of having been procured by bribery — the people who do the actual work are construction workers represented by SUNTRACS. Throw Odebrecht off the job and it might entail something that union leader Saúl Méndez is warning about, disruption of the job with layoffs for workers whom he represents.
But what’s a commie radical movement to do when all the other commie radicals — as well as most business and conservative groups in the country — are protesting about the systematic government corruption of which Odebrecht is the poster child?
Well, call out SUNTRACS and friends to block traffic to protest corruption on a Friday. That sort of covers the movement from allegations of being soft on corruption, and after the morning’s protests are over gives the union rank-and-file a longer weekend.
The big Odebrecht project now underway is Line 2 of the Metro commuter train system. It would be disruptive to throw the confessed criminal company off the job, but as they do a lot of the work through subcontractors giving them the boot may not have to involve a shutdown of the project. It would largely depend on how the government managed any expulsion of the Brazilian company.
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After my last article, in which I mentioned that the Arabs started the 1948 war after the partition resolution of the UN, I received several furious messages.
The writers, who (I suppose) were born after the events, accuse the Zionists of starting the war in order to expel the Arab population.
Since I took part in the events — I was 24 years old at the time — I feel that it is my duty to describe what really happened, as truthfully as possible. (I have written two books about it, one during the war and one immediately after.)
To describe the atmosphere in the country just before the war, let me recount one of the great moments of my life.
In the late summer, an annual folk dance festival took place in a natural amphitheater in the Carmel mountains. About 40 thousand young men and women were assembled, a very large number given that our total population was only about 635,000.
At the time, a commission of the United Nations (UNSCOP) was touring the country in order to find a solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict.
We were watching the dance groups — among them one from a neighboring Arab village, who danced the Debka with such enthusiasm that they just couldn’t stop — when the loudspeakers announced that members of the UN commission were visiting us.
Spontaneously, all the thousands of young men and women stood up and broke into the National Anthem with such vigor that the echo resounded from the mountains around us.
It was the last time that my generation was assembled. Within a year, thousands of those present were dead.
Following the recommendation of that commission, the General Assembly of the UN resolved on November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as a separate unit under international rule.
Though the territory allotted to the Jewish state was small, the Jewish population realized the immense importance of statehood. It was just three years after the end of the Holocaust.
The entire Arab world opposed the resolution. As they saw it, why should the Arab population of Palestine pay the price for the Holocaust committed by Europeans?
A few days after the resolution, a Jewish bus was shot at. That was the beginning of Phase 1 of the war.
To understand the events, one must consider the situation. The two populations on the country were closely intertwined. In Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa-Tel Aviv, Arab and Jewish quarters were situated close together.
Every Jewish village was surrounded by Arab ones. To exist, they needed use of the highroads, which were dominated by Arab villages. By now, shootings broke out all over the country. The British were still nominally in charge, but tried to get involved as little as possible.
The underground Jewish paramilitary organization, called Haganah (“Defense”), was responsible for keeping the roads open. Jewish traffic moved in convoys, defended by Haganah members, male and female. The females were needed, because they could hide the illegal weapons under their clothes.
The Arab side had no centralized command. Attacks were undertaken by villagers, many of whom had old rifles at home. Since some of these fellahin were quite primitive, atrocities happened. Our side retaliated the same way. As a result, this became a very bitter struggle.
One group of Haganah fighters, composed of university students, who rushed to the defense of a Jewish settlement bloc, was ambushed and killed to the last man. We saw photos of their severed heads paraded through the streets of Arab Jerusalem.
The inevitable strategy of the Jewish side was to remove the Arab villages along the highways. Jewish villages were told to stay put, whatever the price, though a very few of the most exposed ones were evacuated.
In February, 1948, the British evacuated a Tel Aviv area, and this became the nucleus of the Jewish state. The British left at the same time some compact Arab areas, too.
By the end of March, both sides had already suffered heavy casualties. Phase 2 began.
On April 1, my company was rushed to the improvised port of Tel Aviv to receive a large shipment of Soviet bloc arms. A year before, in a surprise move, the Soviet bloc in the UN had started to support the Zionist side. Stalin, as anti-Zionist as anybody could be, had probably decided that a Jewish state in Palestine was better than a British-US military base.
We spent a day removing the grease from the rifles, which had been produced by the Czechs for Hitler’s army but were too late for World War II. That was the beginning of Phase 2 of the war.
The Jewish quarters of Jerusalem were cut off by the Arab villages on the road. Our operation, the first big one of the war, was to open the road.
A stretch of road, several kilometers long, passed though a narrow gorge, with steep hills on both sides. Bab-al-Wad (Arabic for “Gate of the Valley”) was the terror of every soldier. If we were shot at from above, we would have to get out, climb these hills under fire and fight on top. Not a very pleasant prospect.
A huge convoy of 135 trucks had been assembled, and it was our job to get them to Jerusalem. My squad was allotted a truck carrying cheese, and we tried to arrange some cover between the crates. Luckily, we got through without being attacked. We entered Jerusalem on a Shabbat, masses of religious Jews left the synagogues and received us with immense joy, it resembled de Gaulle’s entry into Paris. (By chance, a photographer took my picture there.)
We returned unscratched. Ours was the last convoy to get through — the next one was attacked and had to turn around. Several costly battles to open the road, which was now blocked by an irregular Arab volunteer force from abroad, failed. We lost a hundred dead.
The road remained closed for decades. Our army found an alternative route which we called the Burma Road, after the British route from India to China in World War II.
By that time it became clear that the regular armies of the surrounding Arab countries were about to enter the war. This changed the character of the fight entirely.
In preparation for the battle, the Israeli army “cleared” large stretches of land of their Arab inhabitants, so as not to leave Arab concentrations behind our lines. This could still be justified by tactical necessity.
On May 14, the last of the British left, and the next day the regular armies of five Arab states — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, with some help from Saudi Arabia — entered the war. They were regular troops, trained and equipped by their former British and French overlords, and had artillery and air power, which we still lacked.
On paper, the Arab side enjoyed a huge superiority in armaments, training and (I am not sure) numbers. But we had three advantages. First, we knew that we were fighting for our lives, quite literally, with our backs to the wall. We had a unified command, while the Arab armies competed with each other. And third: the Arabs had a profound contempt for us. Who has ever heard of Jews fighting? Also, in tactical terms, we had the advantage of “inner lines,” being able to quickly move forces from one front to another.
The following weeks — Phase 3 — saw the most desperate fighting of the entire war, battles that resembled World War I. I saw battles in which almost all our fighters were killed or wounded, and a solitary last machine gun kept firing. There were hours when everything seemed lost.
But then, slowly, the fortunes of war turned. By the end of this round, we were alive and fighting, standing our ground.
Phase 4 still saw some pitched battles, even an attack with bayonets. But our side scented victory. It was then that the mass expulsion of the population of Arab towns and villages became obviously conscious government policy. At that point in time I was severely wounded and left the front.
When everybody on both sides was exhausted, the war ended with a set of armistices, which defined the recognized borders of Israel.
Within these borders, very few Arabs were left. But an almost forgotten fact is that not a single Jew was left in the areas conquered by the Arab side. Fortunately for us, these areas were few and small compared to the large areas conquered by our side. The term “ethnic cleansing” was not yet invented.
These are the facts. Everybody can build on them any interpretation and ideology they fancy.
But, please, no Trumpian “alternative facts.”
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A small crowd gathered to keep the faith and maintain the pressure on February 8. The defenses of those against whom they protested began to crumble the next morning. Photo by Eric Jackson.
President Varela accused: Odebrecht and
Panama Papers scandals merge and explode
by Eric Jackson
As the sun was setting on February 8, a pair of buzzards on a nearby rooftop looked on as some of there featherless peers were gathered in Parque Porras, protecting across from the attorney general’s office. Few in the small crowd were under 40, and despite the bullhorns and the occasional chants a sense of quiet desperation prevailed. Were the same crooks as always going to get away with crimes they clearly committed, with Panamanian society walking right by after the most cursory of glances? Were public officials’ declarations that there is a list of politicians who took money from the Brazilian criminal combine Odebrecht but that the list must remain secret to protect Odebrecht’s privacy going to stick? Would all of the declarations by foreign governments about Odebrecht crimes in and through Panama, with well connected Panamanian accomplices, going to be officially ignored? What could be done by such a small band of dissidents to keep up the pressure?
The following day Attorney General Kenia Porcell’s minions moved into action, citing evidence provided by authorities in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, the United States and Switzerland. Once again they raided the Panama City offices of Mossack Fonseca — this time neither to discover and punish the source of the Panama Papers leaks nor to stop the shredding of documents, but in search of corroboration of some specific information. The law firm’s founding partners, Jüergen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca Mora, were taken in for questioning. On his way into the Avesa building on Via España to answer prosecutors’ questions an enraged Fonseca — this time last year minister without portfolio and right-hand man in President Juan Carlos Varela’s cabinet and VP and effective day-to-day leader of the president’s Panameñista Party — lashed out.
The allegation here was not “The Panama Papers” per se, but that the Mossack Fonseca law firm had helped the Brazilian company Odebrecht launder bribe money for officials of several countries through Panama and through a number of other jurisdictions. The claim that companies incorporated by Mossack Fonseca had been used as shells in corruption within Brazil had been out there for a long time. But over the previous few days former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos had been accused of taking money from Odebrecht through companies or money laundering networks set up by Mossack Fonseca.
“Mossack Fonseca has no relationship with Odebrecht, nor with any other Lava Jato company,” Fonseca told reporters. (Lava Jato, “car wash” in Brazilian Portuguese, is the name of the Brazilian police investigation of corrupt dealings by the Petrobras state-owned oil company, the Odebrecht group of companies built around one of the world’s largest construction firms, and the Braskem chemical company that’s a partnership between Petrobras and Odebrecht. The scandal has shaken Brazilian politics to its core and is nowhere close to over there.) “They’re looking for a scapegoat, for someone to distract attention,” Fonseca said of the prosecutors.
Distract attention from what? Fonseca accused the president and a pair of Panameñista legislators of meeting with the president Supreme Court magistrate, José Ayú Prado, to arrange for the latter to coordinate his decisions with President Varela’s actions. He dropped an even bigger bombshell:
President Varela told me — may lightning strike me if I lie — that he had accepted donations from Odebrecht because he couldn’t fight everyone.
The president’s supporters predictably dismissed the statement as a convenient lie by a man in trouble and seeking to divert attention, some pointing to the hearsay nature of Fonseca’s allegation. National Assembly president Rubén De León, a member of the PRD whose caucus seems to be in disarray about the claims, summed up the traditional response of Panama’s political caste: “Whoever accuses must produce sufficient proofs to demonstrate that the declarations are made with certainty.”
The operating presumption in De León’s scheme is that only someone who is desperate or mad would accuse a president and that nobody would second the allegation. But it may be that no other Panamanian need come forward to back up Fonseca’s story. There may be witness testimony from within Odebrecht, and documentary evidence in prosecution hands, to corroborate what Fonseca said.
Law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal, the principal organizer of the vigil in Parque Porras, opined that “the confessions of Fonseca Mora corroborate what is known.” Independent legislator and former attorney general Ana Matilde Gómez pointed out that while Fonseca’s statement isn’t sufficient to bring charges against Varela in the legislature, the current attorney general’s move against Mossack Fonseca was not some whim carried out without a foundation of information and investigation. Although she noted that the statement was made via the media and not under oath in a judicial proceeding, Gómez warned that Foncesca’s word could not be discounted because he was an insider in Varela’s political operation. “This is something that has to be verified,” she concluded.
Because it was Fonseca alleging what he said that Varela told him, wouldn’t this be hearsay? Indeed. In the Common Law system that prevails in the USA, hearsay is generally not permitted into evidence. However, if Varela said what he said, that would be an admission against penal interest and an exception to the ban on hearsay would apply. In Civil Code jurisdictions like Panama, the strict ban on hearsay isn’t in effect but such evidence is generally considered unconvincing unless corroborated by extrinsic proofs.
After a full day of questioning, prosecutors ordered Fonseca, Mossack and a third lawyer at their firm jailed pending further interrogation.
Meanwhile President Varela and his current inner circle — like Ramón Fonseca Mora — were issuing stern denials. The president said that he had never taken money from Odebrecht, and within less than a day had authorized the Electoral Tribunal to release his list of campaign donors. But from proceedings in other countries we know that Odebrecht usually paid off politicians, either as outright bribes or in the form of campaign contributions, via intermediaries that couldn’t readily be identified with the Brazilian company. Such is one of the luxuries of Panamanian corporate secrecy.
And what about Fonseca’s denial? He qualified his distancing from the Lava Jato shell companies, some of which his law firm did create. “The law doesn’t require you to know the final destination of companies, as is being asserted now,” he complained. Just because Mossack Fonseca created a shell company doesn’t mean that it will never be transferred without the law firm’s knowledge or control, the argument goes. But in the world of “off the shelf” shell companies, the law firm creators often know, and will sometimes advise, one or more transfers of a given company — whether for real or just on paper — in order to throw any investigator off if its tracks.
The case for which Mossack and Fonseca are being held is not about Odebrecht bribing Panamanian public officials. It’s about the firm setting up shells to hide bribery in other jurisdictions, offenses under Panama’s money laundering laws. One reason that bribery of Panamanians isn’t in the case is about constitutional jurisdiction. As to any sitting legislator, the Supreme Court is the only institution with jurisdiction to act. As to the president it’s only the National Assembly that has the power to investigate, prosecute and try. If the prosecutors of the Public Ministry find evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Varela or one or more legislators, they must stop the line of inquiry as to those officials and hand that part of their files over to the appropriate authorities.
The legislators have their own distractions. Pending before the Supreme Court is an appeals court ruling that absolved jailed ex-magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna’s alleged money laundering accomplices on the theory that Moncada Luna’s plea bargain in his own case bars investigation or prosecution of accomplices who were not parties to that case for crimes that they may have committed. The legislature is considering Proposed Law 245, meant to encourage plea bargaining that would help clear up the monumental backlogs in this country’s criminal court dockets. But the appeals court ruling and the possibility that the high court will accept it means that Bill 245 could be used to have Odebrecht cop a plea to a criminal charge, with that deal then being used to bar any inquiry about legislators who took money from Odebrecht. In the face of a great public uproar, the legislators moved to amend the proposal. They added a provision that public officials convicted for corruption offenses could not avoid prison time by paying a fine. Which may be all well and good, but it doesn’t address the main concern about the proposed law.
To peruse the public record of every country in which Odebrecht’s criminal operations have been seriously investigated and in which the gist of what investigators have found have been revealed would lead to an expectation with respect to Panama. Most probably Odebrecht paid off most politicians of each major political party. If the hue and cry goes out to drive off the politicians who took Odebrecht money, that is almost surely the great majority of Panamanian legislators.
PRD party leader and legislator Pedro Miguel González implicitly acknowledges this problem and calls for and end to all corporate contributions to political campaigns. But his and the two other major parties in the legislature each lack a coherent and unified response to the unfolding scandal. The talk is becoming ominous.
From Cambio Democratico’s former security minister, José Raúl Mulino, himself the target of criminal investigations, the solution is to remove both President Varela and Attorney General Porcell. Veteran PRD campaigner Balbina Herrera talks about the possibility of a “technical coup.” Ana Matilde Gómez says that Porcell seems to be doing the right thing, doubts that as it now stands the legislature has what it would need to remove Varela, but thinks that the president may have lost so much support in the legislature that he may not be able to rule as a matter of political reality, regardless of the legal niceties.
Stay tuned. The ragtag little swarm of gadflies will be back in greater numbers. Other shoes are likely to drop. Panama is in institutional crisis mode and there seems to be no quiet and easy way out.
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