Pressure mounts for Odebrecht audits

AS PRESIDENT Juan Carlos Varela distances himself from the Odebrecht scandal and Panama links to the company’s jailed former president and the Brazilian  “car wash” scandal, two former comptrollers yesterday have said that it would be possible for the agency to carry out an audit of the work performed in Panama by the Brazilian construction firm.

Jose Chen Barria said that while it is true that the comptroller has no engineers or personnel for such audits, there are international companies that do that work  “every day” reports La Prensa.

While Carlos Vallarino suggested that the comptroller should not only look at a project’s finances, as is being done with line 1 of the Metro, but it should conduct technical audits even though they require more resources.

The issue of possible corruption in contracts granted to Odebrecht in Panama has arisen because company president Marcelo Odebrecht has been sentenced to almost 20 years in prison on similar charges in Brazil.

On Monday, March 14, Comptroller Federico Humbert said that his office is making a “financial audit” of line 1 “since a technical audit is extremely complicated for works of this magnitude.”

In June 2015, Secretary of the Metro Roberto Roy asked Humbert to conduct the audit.

Odebrecht is also the contractor for line 2 of the Metro, as well as the proposed urban renewal project in Colón The two contacts are worth more than $2 billion.