Blue Apple donated to PRD presidential bid

Juan Carlos Navarro, the PRD presidential hopeful in the 2014 presidential campaign, received a $20,000 donation from the Blue Apple company that is now the center of a major corruption investigation.

This was stated in the sworn statement of contributions delivered to the Electoral Tribunal (TE), by Navarro, in July 2014 and ratified by his spokesman Max Bedoya, reports La Prensa.

The legal representative of Blue Apple was the lawyer Federico Barrios, who is in preventive detention as part of the investigation of the case by the Sixth Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

Prosecutors are following the trail of alleged payment of bribes and other acts of corruption by contractors of the Panamanian State who belonged to the Blue Apple bribery structure created to pay off government officials.

On February 21 of last year, the PRD published in its Twitter network the list of people who contributed to the campaign, in the midst of the national debate over the investigation by the Public Ministry, after the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht admitted having bribed Panamanian officials, Navarro explained

Another of the donors to the PRD campaign who appears on the list is Joaquín Rodríguez Salcedo, also in detention over the Blue Apple case. He donated $5,000.

Rodriguez Salcedo, former vice president of Factoring and Surety of Global Bank, has been charged with alleged  money laundering and other offenses

Navarro’s spokesman, Bedoya, confirmed that the campaign of the PRD received, on March 20, 2012, a check from Blue Apple Services.

“At the moment of receiving the contribution, we proceeded to issue a donation receipt to the aforementioned company, as was done with all donations received by the campaign. A copy of the check and the respective donation receipt was also sent to the Electoral Tribunal ” said Bedoya.