There is a Corruption Scandal in the Assembly. Comptroller Anel Flores: Payment by Checks will Continue

Panama City: Comptroller General Anel ‘Bolo’ Flores lashed out at the actions of National Assembly President Dana Castañeda and the legislative officials who are paid without working.  This comes in light of the scandal surrounding the announcement that, starting yesterday, Assembly officials will be paid by check rather than electronic deposit (ACH).  Flores said he’s not humiliating anyone. “The ones who made the noise yesterday were the bottles harangued by the deputies.” He warned that he will continue paying by check until he can thoroughly review forms 001, 002, and 172.  He told News reporters that, before entering the Assembly—almost three and a half weeks ago—he spoke with the president of the Legislature and told her he had to review the 172 form, which she had announced she had closed when he arrived at the Assembly.

“We haven’t had the president’s cooperation,” he stated.  She questioned Castañeda’s failure to cooperate with the audits and asserted that officials on payroll 172 were moved to payrolls 001 and 002. “Nothing happened; no one was voted on there. That’s completely false. Her claim that she reduced the payroll is completely false.”  He stated that Castañeda “was told that this was the way to get to the bottom of things, to get rid of the people who aren’t working, who are bottlenecks, in order to clean up the image of the Assembly and contribute to the transparency those citizens so demand.”  He questioned Castañeda’s attitude, who had challenged the payment of officials by check and asked Flores to change his strategy. 

“We demand respect. They haven’t had the capacity to carry out a decent check distribution, so I ask the Comptroller’s Office to review and rethink the strategy, because today they are humiliating the officials,” Castañeda said yesterday, amidst cheers and applause from Assembly officials who supported her.  Flores said that “yesterday we witnessed the attitude of an Assembly president who seemed like just another battalion soldier; I can’t understand what happened,” she said, asserting that Castañeda is campaigning for reelection on July 1.  She insisted that everything that happened yesterday in the Assembly was “part of a game that she [Castañeda] herself caused.

What she says about the disorganization was caused by that very thing; she herself began to detain our officials. And the thing about the famous photos is completely false; what they were asking for was her ID, and they refused to hand it over.”  He reported that officials from the Comptroller’s Office were intimidated all day because the deputies carried “the harangues of countless people who are on the payroll but don’t work, but who did appear yesterday to defend the corrupt cabal that exists in that Assembly.”  He noted that the Human Resources department is run by five or six people, and that “we’re going to take those people to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) for complicity in embezzlement in the payments they’ve made to people who work, and they don’t know who they are.

Those same people have family clans working in the Assembly.”  Flores warned that he had ordered the clocks he will install in the Assembly so everyone can sign, while questioning the fact that some deputies have collaborators signing for very honorable lists and payrolls, up to $300,000. “What happened yesterday is nothing more than a gang of gangsters,” he added.  The law, according to the Comptroller, allows him to put in place those watches that he already ordered.  Today, the Comptroller’s Office will continue paying checks to the Assembly. In response to the strike call that prevented the plenary session from meeting, the Comptroller sent a message: no work, no pay.

“The check measure will remain in place, and you are not the one to tell the Comptroller’s Office how to conduct its oversight of public resources,” the Comptroller stated in response to questions from the Assembly Speaker.“