The wheel turns on political donations from convicted fraudster

THE SHADOW of convicted Colombian fraudster David Murcia has re-appeared over the Panamanian election scene with the surfacing of checks made out to the 2009 Martinelli presidential campaign.

At that time a disinformation campaign spread rumors that Murcia had made major donations to the campaigns of PRD presidential candidate Balbina Herrera, and mayoral candidate Bobby Velasquez. No proof was ever produced, but a 10 point lead in the polls for Velasquez evaporated, and Panama got Bosco Viallarino as mayor, and Ricardo Martinelli trashed Herrera to become president.

After the election,news appeared that Murcia had made out checks to the Martinelli campaign. Murcia,who is currently serving a sentence of nine years in the United States for money laundering, was investigated and arrested in Panama in 2008 for various high profile crimes. When he is released he faces another 32 years in jail, a sentence handed down in Colombia for operating pyramid schemes that robbed thousands of their savings, including many in Panama.

Whilein Panama, Murcia lived a flamboyant lifestyle  with a multi-million dollar yacht and six sports cars, including a Bhuggati 
On Sunday, April 20, members of the legal sector of the Panamenista Party brought copies of checks made out during the 2009 campaign in favor of Ricamar SA, owned by President Ricardo Martinelli property and CD SA , a company created to raise money for thtlast election campaign .
Miguel Batista Guerra said , the checks for several thousand dollars from various companies related to David Murcia, were not included in the investigation conducted against him by the then Drug Prosecutor José Abel Almengor and former Civil Affairs Prosecutor, William Parodi . Almengor was later appointed by Martinelli as a Supreme Court Judge, but resigned after a few months over a scandal for being part of a cabal attacking former Attorney General Ana Matilde Gomez, who was forced from office.
According to Batista, at the time the prosecution obtained information from the checks, but "unfortunately " noinvestigation was made .
"These are checks that were paid in the previous campaign and were not investigated because there is no separation of powers, because prosecutors were not free to investigate, those checks were hidden … but now they and more checks are coming out " he said.
Batista said that this could be the reason why a legal process was set up for the removal from office of Ana Matilde Gómez to stop her making the relevant inquiries,