$59 million Panama bribes could be tip of iceberg

THE $59 MILLION  paid out in bribes in Panama by construction  firm  Norberto Odebrecht, covers only the  five years, when  ex-President Ricardo Martinelli was in power.

But Odebrecht has received public contracts since 2006, during the term of former President Martín Torrijos, and during the current administration of President Juan Carlos Varela.

Now questions are being raised about whether or not the amount of bribes paid in Panama may have been  greater reports La Prensa.

For now, the only person mentioned by name is Carlos Ho, an ex­official of the Ministry of Public Works who worked for two governments: Torrijos and Martinelli. Ho has denied receiving any bribes.

Martinelli’s sons

Meanwhile Swiss authorities have opened investigations into two sons of Martinelli, Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares, who allegedly received bribes as intermediaries of the government. But they have yet to be charged with any crime.

Odebrecht’s volume of bribes was so vast that it had to create a department, called the Structured Operations Sector, to move hundreds of millions of dollars to its “customers.” In addition, it had to create specialized software to keep parallel accounting, to that of the business group.

And it contracted financial operators who were responsible for creating the structure of laundering money through phantom offshore companies ­ many of them created in Panama ­ that included fictitious contracts to give the appearance of legality to the transactions.

These operators opened hundreds of bank accounts all over the world ­ including in the Panamanian banking system.

Such was the volume of bribes that Odebrecht bought the Austrian branch of Antigua’s Meinl Bank, after it failed to buy a branch of Antigua Overseas Bank (AOB).

That branch, which was purchased in 2010, was managed by Vinicius Veiga Borin, who was the official who implicated  Carlos Ho.