President’s secretary tried to bury probe made NY consul

A “high official”  in the Varela administration sat on requests for staff hiring by the director of Panama’s  Transparency and Access to Information  Authority (Antai), because she refused to bury an investigation into nepotism by an insider.

The information was released to the National Assembly’s budget committee by the director Angelica Maytin when she presented her budget requests for the upcoming year and after the vice chair of the committee, said that last year the budget of the Antai was one of the least executed and this year has only spent 48%.

Maytin, who requested a  budget of $2.4 million for 2019, said that “[…] I have had problems in appointing staff, because, as you should know,  … in order to appoint personnel I had to send the appointments to the Ministry of the Presidency for the approval “.  “I did not receive a pass during the past year for my 21 vacancies because of a nepotism investigation of someone who belongs to the government party. and they did not want me to name.

The “person who gave the opinion did not want us to investigate the representative of Chilibre [Aleysis Ureña], who is a Panameñista and had relatives working with her because she had ‘great esteem’  and he wanted us to bury the investigation.  (…) I did not accept that and carried out the investigation, but it has not been concluded because they have not supplied us with certain information, “she explained.

The issue, according to the official, was addressed with the former Minister of the Presidency, Álvaro Alemán, and with President Juan Carlos Varela, in February of this year. “Thank God that person is no longer is not in that position, ” said Maytin.

Although she did not give the name of the official in the presidency who endorsed the appointments  La Prensa revealed that it was  Rafael Flores, ex-secretary of  President Juan Carlos Varela, and who was recently appointed as consul in New York.