Martinelli unfinished flagship disaster will cost $800 million

The controversial City of Health that was to have been a flagship project of the Martinelli administration and was even designated to carry the former president’s name has become instead a symbol of maladministration and corruption and will end up costing about $800 million instead of the $554.3 million projected in 2012 and eight years later is still unfinished.

On Thursday, September 3 The Social Security Fund (CSS) released its roadmap to conclude the project: administratively resolve the contract with the Spanish consortium Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), investigated for the payment of massive bribes in Panama.

According to its director Lau Cortés, the CSS legal team was instructed to begin the process, with all the consequences that this will entail.

The agreement between both parties allows the CSS to declare the contract administratively terminated when one or more of the grounds for termination occur, determined in article 113 of Law 22 of 2006, on Public Procurement. One of those is the breach of the agreed clauses.

The abandonment or suspension of work without prior authorization is also considered causal.

According to the contract, the CSS must notify the contractor for rectification within 30 days and if after that time it does not do so, the entity may claim the bond.

In fact, Lau Cortés considered that last week FCC requested to terminate the contract so that the CSS could not enforce the performance bond, of $55 million.

Aida de Maduro, the representative of the National Council of Private Enterprise on the board of directors of the CSS, told La Prensa that the FCC has to comply with the contract; otherwise, the CSS should enforce the bond. “That is the solution we hope for. There is no other alternative, ”she said.

President Laurentino Cortizo described as “inconceivable” and “a mockery” that FCC speaks of millionaire debts by Panama when it is public that it is involved in anomalies.[bribery]