by Rod Hughes

The prosecution plans to call 300 witnesses, including former President Abel Pacheco, and has compiled mountains of evidence in the fraud trial implicating ex-President Rafael Angel Calderon and former officers of the Fischel Corporation, a pharaceutical firm and one of the country’s largest importers of medicines and medical equipment.

This fraud case and that of the Alcatel cell phone contract that implicates ex-President Miguel angel Rodriguez are two of the three most anticipated high profile criminal prosecutions in recent years. The other one, the contract murder of journalist Parmeio Medina, was resolved last month with two defendants being sentenced to the maximum 30 years in prison. (See previous article in this newfeed.)

The case stems from the procurement of Finnish medical equipment in a multi-million dollar contract with the Social Security Administration (Caja) branch that runs public hospitals here. Calderon is charged with a sort of influence peddling role in the transaction and allegedly received a fat commission.

The Finnish consortium of Medko Medical sold $39.5 million of equipment and its then-director, Kari Visti, admits paying out $8.6 million in commissions. The funds were banked in Panama in Fischel accounts. The commissions were allegedly distributed by Harcourt Holdings and Marchwood Holdings in Panama and a company owned by ex-President Calderon is accused of receiving $440,000 and Caja official Eliseo Vargas got fundsfrom the same source to buy a luxurious residence.

It is not known if former President Pacheco is being called to testify in his role of the nation’s president or as a psychiatrist and administrator of the Chapui Mental facility, which he was before going into politics full time. Another high profile witness is the Caja surgeon Dr. Longino Soto. A third is the former secretary of Finland’s International Cooperation office, Harry Salinem.

Finland’s government reacted with horror at learning of the alleged corruption and one official told a newspaper in Helsinki that it would be a long time before his country entered into another cooperative agreement with Costa Rica. The Fischel firm handled the import of pieces of costly equipment from Finnish manufacturers, some of which, it was charged, were unneeded duplications of existing machines in local hospitals. Others, it was reported, did not function properly.

But it was the irregular and secretive way that the transaction was done that tipped off prosecutors. One witness, former prosectuor Farid Beruite, is reported by the newspaper La Nacion, to testfy that Calderon reacted with high indignation when prosecutors initiated legal procedures to open the records of Panamanian bank accounts where the allegedly illegal Finnish commissions had been squirreled away.

Besides Calderon and Vargas, other defendants include former Fischel official Walter Reiche as well as the corportation’s former lawyer, Rasndall Vargas, accused of forgery and the destruction of documents to obscure the paper trail.

Some of the witnesses to be called are implicated in the scandal. Due to the large number of witnesses and the fact that some of them are also implicated in the ICE-Alcatel corruption case that may run partially simultaneously, the trial may last a year, according to the paper.