ANOTHER PANAMA citizen’s group has added its voice to growing concerns over the recent contracts awarded to Brazilian construction giant Noberto Odebrecht whose top officers have been arrested in corruption scandals in its home country

“Corruption has reached alarming levels in Panama” was the opening line of a full page advertisement in published in La Prensa by Movimiento Ciudadano por la Identidad Panameña on Wednesday July 1, but the message quickly focused on the pubic biddings of the government megaprojects.
They are worried because the government continues to choose the same companies for all the projects, even though they don’t present the lowest bid.
“With deep frustration we observed that senior officials of the current government continue to favor the Brazilian company Odebrecht without reviewing the multimillion works they have delivered, against all logic of transparency and compromising the free competition, safety and independence of the State investment plan” said the announcement
Even though other companies are also involved in all sorts of corruption scandals, ODEBRECHT monopolizes 60% of the State public investment.
“The movement is demands the government to carries out a technical investigation, simultaneously with an investigation that verifies if ODEBRECHT hasn’t been involved in bribes, influence peddling and conflicts of interest with the members of the evaluation committees of the public biddings. Offences that, as we all know, have taken ODEBRECHT’s president to jail in Brazil.”
They also called on Comptroller Federico Hubert Arias, to assume his “responsibility towards history” and become the “Transparency Comptroller” for the Panamanian people.