by Rod Hughes

The Central Bank dumped dollars on the money market for the second time in two weeks to try to halt the artificial rise of the U.S. dollar in the exchange of colones. The colon reached ¢527.85 per dollar yesterday, an all-time record. The colon rollercoaster is blamed on exchange speculators.

“When the dollar dropped, a lot of people changed their colones and now they’re converting to dollars again. But this isn’t good because if the dollar drops again, they can lose money,” cautioned Guillermo Quesada, manager of Bancrédito. The wild fluction began late last year when the Central Bank set the colon at the high 480s per dollar. But in the past two months that devaluation of the dollar exchange has been reversed.

Fortunately, the Central Bank has a healthy dollar reserve to use to stabilize things. And, with the prices of petroum rising to record highs of $120 plus per barrel, what has gone up recently is sure to fall. The exchange rate is related to inflation and rising food prices has already hit hard at the poor of Costa Rica, as it has in many other countries.

Central Bank president Francisco de Paula Gutiérrez also warned investors not to rush to exchange their savings based on temporary blips in the money market.

In other banking news, Banco de Costa Rica, one of the country’s oldest public banks, elected a new president, Luis Carlos Delgado, to replace Victor Emilio Hererra whose term expires June 1. Hererra admitted to the daily La Nación that he threw his support to Delgado. Others on the board are Percival Kelso, Roland Chacón, Alcides Calvo, Leonardo Ferris and Pablo Ureña.

<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

The Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica’s Catholic Church sent illegally obtained funds to Panama to escape the eyes of the government financial watchdogs, revealed the daily <em>La Nación</em> Thursday, in yet another article in a series that surely will win prizes for investigative reporting. Each new revellation of the use of Pastoral Services bank accounts to gather investor deposits has come as a blow to the Church’s prestige.

In July of 2005, Sugef, the national equivalent of the SEC in the United States, notified the Episcopal Conference that they could not act as a stock brokerage firm and ordered the body of bishops to cease and desist from doing so. To avoid these restrictions, the paper revealed, fund administrators continued to accept investor funds and to make loans through a Panamanian firm. According to one investor, a medic named Dr. Hugo Howell, he was notified of the move to avoid Sugef scrutiny. But the attorney for fund accountant, Minor Rojas, denies that his client remembers sending any such communications.

On May 14 of this year, Sugef formally accuse the conference of bishops for their offshore investment activities. But at least three bishops have denied they knew anything about the movement of funds. Yet an accountant, Jorge Sánchez, who has had an account with Pastoral Services since the 1990s says the move never was kept a secret. Sánchez says he worked directly with the fund’s administrator, the late Jorge Torres. Sánchez denied to the paper that Torres had ever instructed him to keep mum about the fund’s activities lest the bishops found out.

Dr. Howell also concurs that he was never sworn to secrecy and added, "It’s strange to me that they’re saying these things… I always thought Torres was an impeccable person."

Among the investors are family members of Church hierarchy. The list of investors was omitted from a report by Episcopal Conference lawyer Carlos Vargas gave <em>La Nación</em> on April 15. The Panamanian branch of Pastoral Services is closely associated with the investment firm Grupo Sama in that country.

by Rod Hughes

If you are one of the 400,000 pepole in Costa Rica who have a TDMA technology cell phone, enjioy it now because you won’t have it long. At the start of 2009, the phone company will begin to phase out the TDMA system.

ICE’s CEO Pedro Pablo Quirós explained yesterday that world phone industry is no longer offering the system. In 2009, ICE will offer a new generation 3G and install tranmission for 1.5 million new lines. He added that ICE is pushing the change to GSM for now, since 3G is more expensive. Also GSM offers a faster Internet and videophone service.

In fact, TDMA phones have disappeared from the market, even if one wanted one. According to Veronica Solózano, director of the Association of Cell Phone Manufacturers, new cell phones and repair parts using the TDMA system have not been exported for the past three years. But one industry insider warned that bootleggers are still selling rebuilt TDMA phones from Mexico and Miami.

by Rod Hughes

A La Nación healine writer called it the “eternal final.” And how often has the national soccer championship final been between these two clubs? It seems to average out that every other year they meet and settle accounts. So, on to another “classic” final. Here is how they got there:

Brujas 2, Saprissa 1

Brujas head coach Mauricio Wright saved some honor after a disastrous first semi-final match in which Brujas was swamped 5-0. Wright did some creative twiddling with the fiorward alignments to confuse the big purple “S” and it worked. If they had played in Asserrí as they did during the first half of this match they might have pulled off an upset. The play had scarcely opened when Saprissa’s Michael Barrantes fouled striker Daniel Jimenez. Osman López sank the penalty shot. The clock read exactly one minute. Brujas came back again 17 minutes later with Kraesher Mooke passing to Saul Phillip for the 2-0 and that is how the half ended.

If a Hollywood screenwriter, who did not know how hard it is to score in soccer against a first class club, would have written it, Brujas would have made three more in the second half, tied Saprissa in overall goals for the series and would have won it on a penalty shootout. But Mr. Reality stretched, scratched his beer belly, and decreed that Saprissa held the desperate Brujas attack and then, at the very end when all was lost for Brujas anyway, Saprissa’s Ronald Gómez sank a goal on an assist by César Elizondo. A bitter pill.

Parks Parks 4 as Alajuela Beats P-Z

At the end of the first half Wednesday, it appeared that a Saprissa-style stampede was in the works. The scoreboard at Morera Soto Stadium read 5-1. But Perez Zeledon, the warriors from the southern zone, do not got softly into that goodnight. They scored twice more while finally finding the plug to stop up their goal mouth against Alajuela’s Winston Parks. Too late. (Mr. Reality attended THAT match, too. Although he seems to have overlooked Parks. NOBODY makes four goals in the 79 minutes he was on the pitch. But he did!)

Doom, thy name is Winston Parks! He scored in less than a minute of play on a pass by Victor Nuñez, again at minute 11 on a pass by Harold Wallace then Wallace had his turn to score on a pass from Eliseo Quintanilla, before P-Z’s Diego País took a pass from Luis Steward Pérez to put them on the board, 3-1. And then Parks was back at it again on a pass by Quintanilla. Then Parks did it again on a pass by Carlos Castro. His number four made it 5-1. P-Z’s Keylor Quesada fought back valiantly with a goal as did País with his second goal but Parks had already sunk P-Z’s boat.