Eric Jackson reports on yet another member of the government that goes to prison. We may have to dedicate a new wing at La Joya for all these guys and more that will surely follow.
Luis Cucalón, who headed the General Revenue Directorate (DGI) — which was briefly an authority until the Supreme Court overturned that reorganization — and is now in jail for an unfolding scandal about a contract with Cobranzas del Istmo, a private collection agency that was hired to collect past due taxes and was grossly overpaid. Photo by the Ministry of Economy and Finance
Circular finger-pointing and denials about large-scale bribery and peculation in a contract for a private company to collect overdue taxes
Will the Cobranzas del Istmo affair sink the fortunes of two political parties and two of Panama’s richest men?
Former tax director Luis Cucalón and Cristóbal Salerno, the owner of the Cobranzas del Istmo company that had a tax collection contract, contradict each other about many things, but they do agree that Salerno made a $5.8 million payment to Cucalón, which the latter calls a “loan.” Cucalón and Salerno are both jailed under preventive detention for bribery and embezzlement and continue to tell their stories to prosecutors. Auditors have documented the payment and say that Cobranzas del Istmo improperly received on the order of $47 million from the government.
Salerno says that of this, his company was paying Ricardo Martinelli $200,000 per month in kickbacks, delivered every two or three months in suitcases containing $400,000 or $600,000 in cash. Martinelli, safe for now in exile in Miami, denies it in Twitter tweets. The man who ran for president on a platform of being crazy says “I didn’t take a f…ing nickel” and says that nobody should believe Salerno because the man’s mentally ill.
There are many other claims and counterclaims, some contradictory, but where the investigation has yet to go but most to to be generally believed by a jaded public is to the doorstep of perhaps Panama’s richest man, former Minister of Economy and Finance Alberto Vallarino. Both Cucalón and Salerno were directors of Vallarino-owned companies. Vallarino brought both Cucalón and the current minister — also another old business associate of his — Dulcidio De La Guardia into the Martinelli administration with him, and signed the tax collection contract with Cobranzas del Istmo.
When Martinelli broke his alliance with the Panameñista Party Vallarino and De La Guardia remained loyal to the Panameñistas and resigned. Cucalón sided with Martinelli and was rewarded with a tax czar position that was ultimately abolished by the Supreme Court.
The Cobranzas contract and government payments on it continued for some months into the Varela administration under De La Guardia as minister. The rabiblanco media are lining up into pro- and anti-Vallarino factions, but as yet prosecutors have not called the former minister in to testify.