Former VP Pipo Virzi dead at 79

Panamanian politician and businessman Felipe Pipo died this Thursday, February 3, relatives confirmed.

Virzi was the second vice president of Panama during the government of President Ernesto Pérez Balladares (1994-1999). In recent years he was the subject of multiple criminal investigations.

“The evil that men do”… 
After his term as vice president, he associated with Gabriel Btesh in real estate matters and obtained profits on land during the government of Ricardo Martinelli. It was in this period that Virzi was linked in 2012 with an act of money laundering in favor of Martinelli for an irrigation project in Tonosí, province of Los Santos valued at $37 million that was never built.

For this case, he was preventively detained in 2015, and then benefited from house arrest because of his age but while under house arrest fresh allegations surfaced.

In 2017, he was linked to an alleged diversion of funds from the Savings Bank to the Financial Pacific brokerage house.