TODAY COLOMBIA (Prensa Latina) An investigation carried out by the Public Ministry of Panama, concerning a ghost company of Odebrecht provided information for the corruption scandal that shakes Colombia, publishes today daily La Estrella de Panama.
Last January 24, the seventh prosecutor anticorruption district, Alexandra Vence, asked the Public Registry for data on companies Punto Fa S.A. and Lurion Trading Inc., the latter created here on January 20, 2010, through the lawfirm G&R, and supposedly top ay bribes in Colombia.
History of resident agents and legal representatives, capital and assets or real estate are some of the 14 aspects solicited by the General Prosecution office of the neighboring country, according to the source, and two days after Lurion changed its structure and G&R resigned to a legal representation.
Colombian authorities also assert that the bribe of US$6.5 million dollars to obtain a contract of the road Ruta del Sol, were transfered to several accounts open in the Private Andorra Bank (PAB) to the name of Lurion Trading, said the newspaper.
‘To that effect the international financial system was used, including the jurisdictions of the United States, Antigua and Andorra’, stated the general prosecutor of Colombia, Nestor Humberto Martinez to journalists and thanked the cooperation of Panama in this case.
According to the official, ex Senator Otto Bula (presently arrested) sent since 2014 two payments to Colombia for the total sum of one million dollars, through Lurion and the APB, whose final beneficiary was the management of the election campaign of acting president Juan Manuel Santos, which the Executive denies and attributes to an opposition campaign.
Colombian newspaper El Espectador recalled that society was created one month after Odebrecht won the contract for the second stretch of the Ruta del Sol and figure as its directors Annette Medina, Cesar Afu and Felix Valencia Maldonado.
Also, the latter appears as treasurer of Nunvac, a society of security services and communications, implicated in a scandal of espionaje that involves former Panamanian president Ricardo Martuinelli (2009-2014).
Last January 30, the Bank Superintendency ordered the forced luiquidation of the Panamanian subsidiarty of APB, due to the silence of its owners after being intervened since March, 2015, accused by the United States for money laundering and not proposing a solution.
‘The liquidation of the Central American subsidiary of the Andorran Bank must be framed in the fact that the APB was the Andorran coinnection of the tax evasion scheme artiuculated from the Panamanian lawfirm Mossack Fonseca’, publisjed the digital edition of Spanish newspaper Cinco Dias.
Article originally appeared on Today Colombia and is republished here with permission.
