Panama: Former private secretary Martinelli implicated in corruption

Panama, Dec 18 (PL).- Adolfo de Obarrio, former private secretary of former President Ricardo Martinelli, was again implicated today in investigations by the First and Second Anti-Corruption Prosecutors’ Offices for embezzlement in the National Aid Program (PAN) of the previous government.

What is strange is that it involves the former head of the PAN, Giacomo Tamburrelli, former general secretary of Democratic Change and a trusted man of Martinelli, who has already stated that Martinelli ordered him to sign a contract for 45 million dollars for dehydrated school food that was a huge fraud.

In his statement, which will continue on the 23rd, for the purchase of spoiled food from Lerkshore International Limited, whose owner, Rubén de Ycaza, is under house arrest, he said that “in the PAN everything was handled in an atmosphere of fear, threats and terror by Chichi De Obarrio.”

He added that the companies that benefited the most were those of Juan Carlos Marciaga, whom he identified as a partner of De Obarrio.

Just yesterday, De Obarrio’s lawyer, Edna Ramos, had a meeting with Martinelli and the lawyer Alejandro Pérez, a meeting that the former president’s spokesman, Eduardo Camacho, described as “casual” although it is known that it was not so.

Yesterday, the Second Prosecutor’s Office seized an apartment in the Harmony building in San Francisco, belonging to businessman Rubén de Ycaza, and an investigation is planned for José Rodríguez González, personal pilot of businessman Gabriel Gaby Btesh, the main member of Martinelli’s “circle zero.”

The pilot – alleged front man for Btesh and “president” of the company Cabin Corp., which had a turnover of 3.9 million dollars in the last five years – did not attend the investigation, and presented an excuse to avoid facing complaints of alleged cost overruns on charter flights contracted by the PAN.

Meanwhile, the First Prosecutor’s Office investigated businesswoman Mara Del Carmen Vergara for embezzlement in the sale to the PAN of 1.5 million dollars in food for hard-to-reach schools, at 80 dollars per quintal of rice when its maximum price was 49, and at 110 dollars for legumes compared to 55 its real price.

lb/lma