Intelligence report fingers Panama suspects

A REPORT released by the  Financial Intelligence Unit of Andorra,  implicating the parents of ex-Presidency Minister Jimmy Papadimitriu has also cast a  spotlight on multiple other Panama companies under criminal investigation.

MECO construction company, for example, is one of the companies that appear in the Blue Apple Case, paying bribes to officials to streamline procedures and disbursements reports TVN.

The president of MECO, Carlos Cerda Araya, owns the Mural del Valle company, which appeared in the Panama Papers. The firm Mossack & Fonseca registered a deposit of $1.7 million dollars to the company from the Bahamas.

The Andorra report  also mentions Monterverde NG Power. In which Rodolfo Barniol Zerega and José Dapelo Benites appear as executives. Barniol, former president of Petroecuador, and Dapelo were accused of being part of a network of corruption in South America that facilitated the granting of oil fields in 2008.

Both Barniol and Dapelo also appear among the directors of LNG Group Panama, a company that would subsidize Panama NG Power and would have been favored with the concession of a natural gas plant in Isla Telfers, Colón, for 40 years.

The contract was denounced by the energy sector since the company would sell energy at a price much greater than the rest of the market. Panama NG Power, whose main shareholder is Alfredo Alemán, maintains a legal dispute with the Public Services Authority. In December of last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the energy company.

Apollo International is a financial services company that  received, along with Pyramid Financial Group, $8.5 million of the fees charged by attorney Amador Arjona for advice during the tender process of the purchase of Dehydrated Food in the National Assistance Program  (PAN), in  which ex-president Ricardo Martinelli is  facing charges, and in the Cold Chain.

The company People 1-D and Gold Park Investment Inc., also named in the Andorra report deposited money in the Global Overseas account for the purchase of the Panamá América Publishing House, a transaction investigated in the New Business case.

Select Engineering and Consulting, a company associated with Odebrecht, deposited 75,000 euros in an account of the sons of Ricardo Martinelli.