Presidency employee gets $27,000 for US surgery

MARÍA Inés Marien Calviño Correa, a former employee of the President’s family business and a well paid member of his administration  is the latest beneficiary of  a munificent  hand out from a discretionary treasure chest.

While employed in  the Ministry of the Presidency, in July 2016,  President Juan Carlos Varela approved expenses of $27,000 thousand were covered for a surgical procedure performed in the Johns Hopkins  hospital in , Baltimore, Maryland.

According to information available on the website of the

$19,000  was in payment for  surgery and another $8,202

in hotel, transfers, food, medicine and air tickets for   Calviño and a companion.

Calviño earns a salary of $ 6,000 a month in the Ministry of the Presidency and has old links Varela  going back to Varela Hermanos, the family business of the president , where she served as a commercial manager reports La Prensa.

In 2009, when Varela came to the government as Ricardo Martinelli’s Vice president and  foreign minister he took Calviño to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to coordinate the summits of the Ministry. When the alliance between Martinelli and Varela broke up in August of 2011, Calviño left the Executive, like others close to Varela.

She worked actively in the political campaign of 2014, that brought Varela to power, and was one of the key people in the transition from

On April 24 of this year, It was announced that Calviño Correa was the executive director of the Commission of Support for

The World Youth Day, an event to be held in the country in January 2019.

 That day, Calviño was at the table with the archbishop of Panama, José Domingo Ulloa, the first lady, Lorena Castillo de Varela, and the chancellor, Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado.

She has also served as  temporary Deputy Minister of the Presidency on two occasions and  as an advisor to the Panama Tourism Authority. She  was part of the delegation of the chancellor De Saint Malo de Alvarado on a trip to Puebla,

Mexico, in November 2015, where they addressed tourism and cultural issues.

La Prensa  called Calviño to ask about the disbursement made by the Presidency to pay for her  operation, but there was no response on  her cell phone.