Savings Bank manager resigns after media probes
The general manager of the Savings Bank, (Caja de Ahorras) Andrés Farrugia , announced on Thursday, April 22, that he was making his position available “to maintain the good name of my family, which has always been associated with work and discipline.”
He said that he decided to resign because he intends to file legal actions against the media and does not want that to hinder the good administration of the organization.
Farrugia said that he has already informed the Board of Directors which was meeting “in the next room,” but none of its members joined him at the press conference.
Farrugia said that he will sue La Prensa and the medium Foco, for alleged damages.
Earlier, Foco had reported that Farrugia had acquired a property in a millionaire project, on some artificial islands in the Bay of Panama. Farrugia limited himself to saying that he has a real estate investment company, “which handles million-dollar projects, I have million-dollar investments with private shareholders.”
He stressed that his declaration of assets is in the Office of the Comptroller General, although by law, it is not available to the public, unless he voluntarily decides to disclose it.
The resignation comes after La Prensa published on April 8 that the CA opened an account in the name of former President Ricardo Martinelli, in December 2020, by direct authorization from Farrugia, despite the warnings presented by compliance officers of the state bank, given the client’s profile, as a “PEP” (politically exposed person), in investigations of corruption and money laundering that are underway in Panama and their mention in other investigations abroad.
On opening the account to Martinelli, Farrugia noted that the bank did not skip governance or approval scales. He affirmed that he also does not have the power to convict a person that the law “has not convicted.”
On December 23, 2020, Martinelli’s account received an international transfer from Watervista Properties, LLC., owner of the former president’s mansion in Coral Gables, Miami The amount of the transfer to his account in the CA rose to $6.7 million.
The $6.7 million was, in turn, distributed among four private interest foundations that opened additional accounts in the CA in January. All of them were approved for fixed-term deposits, while Martinelli received, from the bank, a credit card with a limit of $30,000. The general manager of CA, according to the sources consulted by La Prensa even assigned a bank official to personally attend to all the requirements of the new client.
The foundations that received the money from the transfer of the $6.7 million were created in January of this year by lawyers linked to the Martinelli family.
Aurora Muradas Fraiz, Úrsula Banz, María del Sol Rivera, and Ricardo Martinelli were accepted as clients of the bank despite the fact that all four have been investigated in the Odebrecht file.
