National Assemblys inexhaustiblescandals
Audits conducted by the Comptroller General have revealed dozens of serious irregularities in the administration of state funds in communal centers. The results are in the hands of the Public Prosecutor and include sitting deputies.
They show that several re-elected deputies for the current period (2014-2019)directly managed millions, without control and in a questionable way reports La Prensa
The National Assembly continues to be an inexhaustible source of scandals .
To the multimillion-dollar payrolls for the alleged hiring of temporary staff are now added the communal boards, to which went tens of millions of State dollars through the circuital games that the government of Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) approved for the discretionary use of the deputies, some of them re-elected for the current period.
Audits by the Office of the Comptroller General now lie in the Public Ministry, whose prosecutors can only investigate ex-deputies and public servants of local governments.
The rest – sitting deputies – will have to be investigated by the Supreme Court.
La Prensa revealed, in early 2013, the existence of a structure created in the government of the time, in which deputies and several community boards – with the participation of the Comptroller’s Office, of that time under the direction of Gioconda Torres de Bianchini (deceased.) – would have diverted state funds. These monies were increased, especially among deputies who jumped from their political parties to the ranks of Cambio Democrático.
In the first two years of the Martinelli government, the deputies received, at least, $ 156 million, whose administration was entrusted to community boards with no experience in managing large volumes of money.
Auditors found huge sums of money paid in checks, which were then converted to by a single person in a single day, despite the fact that they were managed as “aid to the community”.
In addition, there was the hiring of supplier companies belonging to deputies; false bills signed blank checks for the handling of state funds; nonexistence of purchased products or the payment for merchandise to distribute to voters a few days before the 2014 elections; payments to nonexistent companies, and a long etc.
Deputy Absalón Herrera García, a low-profile defector jumped from the (PRD) to CD, after the 2009 elections.
Between 2010 and 2011, he received $3 million from the Government for alleged community works in the Guna Yala territory.
Herrera García chose the Community Board of the corregimiento of Playa Leona, in the province West Panama, to administer the funds, which supposedly would be directed to his circuit.
The auditors collected a total of 44 invoices totaling approximately $650.000 dated between 2012 and 2013. They were printed at a later date than the presentation before the community board.
The deputy does not respond to phone calls, emails or WhatsApp says La Prensa,
