Convicted embezzlers re-elected to office as justice lags

The delay of the Judicial Branch in cases in which local authorities have been sentenced for crimes against the public administration was questioned by sectors of civil society, after the representative of the township of Chilibre, the PRD Yoira Perea, who was sentenced to 60 months for embezzlement, was sworn in as president of the Municipal Council of Panama. She will be accompanied as vice president of the council by the representative of San Felipe, Mario Kennedy, convicted in 2012 for the crime of fraudulent embezzlement to the detriment of the township’s Community Board.

Kennedy’s process began with an audit by the Comptroller General of –remitted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2005–, which detected a possible patrimonial damage for $441,592, after the allegedly irregular handling of funds in the Communal Board of San Felipe between 1999 and 2003.

The case against Kennedy that began in 2005 was defined in August 2021, after the Criminal Chamber did not admit an appeal filed by his lawyer.

In the case of Perea, who took office as president of the Municipal Council on Tuesday, January 3, she is among a group of 30 people who were sentenced 14 years after the investigation began for the commission of a crime against the public administration with different forms of embezzlement, to the detriment of the Ministry of Education. After the investigation, it would have been verified the embezzlement and appropriation of money belonging to the Fund for Equity and Quality of Education (FECE), for the sum of $1,568,063.82 million.

For  Annette Planells, from the Independent Movement (Movin), the responsibility for this type of situation lies with the Judiciary.”All criminal cases involving high-level officials and political candidates must have priority so that trials, appeals, and cassations are resolved quickly, preventing us from having criminal officials with access to millions of dollars from all Panamanians.”