OFF THE CUFF: Disappeared wheelchair and Guardian Angel funds

THE CLOUD hanging over ma ny of the prominent players in the administration of former President Ricardo Martinelli, has moved back to former Minister of Social Development (Mides) Guillermo Ferrufino.

 In the last 12 months of the Martinelli administration Mides transferred about $20 million to  National Support Program (PAN) to supposedly help purchase equipment such as wheelchairs, bags of food and  beds. However no records of purchases that have been located says the current head of the social portfolio, Alcibiades Vasquez.

For two months, three auditors of Mides have been looking, for evidence of the use of money moved between the two institutions, reports La Estrella de Panama.

For now, all they have been able to decipher is that the Guardian Angel program created and defended against public criticism by Ferrufino, was stripped of $14 million in six months for use used by the PAN.
Mides transferred also transferred funds to other agencies such as the National Plan for Food and Nutrition Security (SENAPAN) and the National Institute for Women (Inamu)
Transfers of funds to PAN are not the only questionable made in the last administration, according to the current minister.
Vasquez also says that tenders and procurement for soup kitchens were nonexistent.
While internal auditorsat Mides try to decipher where it the transferred money went , the newly installed Comtroller Federico Humbert examines whether or not to give the green light to a contract approved by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) for a $875,000 Forensic into PAN and the clouds that surround it, with one former director in jail, and another under house arrest.
Anticorruption prosecutors have confiscated several bank accounts of Ferrufino and farms in the districts of La Chorrera and Chiriqui.