Comptroller annuls checks, deputies suspend debate

Panama’s lawmakers are facing a new battle with the nation’s Comptroller, Federico Humbert, who has annulled more than 500 salary checks of people employed by some 18 deputies of different parties.

Outraged deputies who were discussing Bill 591, which criminalizes tax evasion suspended their first session after only 30 minutes. If the bill is not passed Panama risks returning to an international financial gray list.

The next session will be on Monday, January 7.

Democratic Change deputy Dana Castañeda said, “There are no botellas (phony jobs), but humble people who are now affected.”

In the speech she delivered during the installation of the final legislative period, on January 2, Assembly president Yanibel Ábrego attacked Humbert and said. “We have seen for the first time a Comptroller’s Office playing a role of the investigator of crimes when their functions are framed in strict right to guarantee the proper use of State resources …”.

Gustavo Valderrama, Deputy Minister of Economy, and other officials of the Ministry of Economy and Finance who were waiting to support the legislative proposal that criminalizes evasion, along with personnel from the Chamber of Commerce, had to withdraw from the premises.

Legislative sources said that the main reason for the suspension of the discussion was not the absence of the Panamenista deputies to debate Bill 591, but the annulment of checks.

the Comptroller’s Office argued that he canceled checks because the officials were not working. On December 27 of last year, during the extraordinary sessions when they also stopped debate after deputies learned that the Comptroller had suspended the payment to several officials. That day, Humbert informed them that their auditors could not do “a concomitant review” to ensure that the staff were in their jobs, because the Assembly did not allow them.

At the end of December, the Minister Finance, Eyda Varela deChinchilla, warned that the rule is not endorsed, Panama will return to the gray list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The 591 project was one of the topics for which the Executive convened the Assembly to extraordinary sessions at the end of last year.