Rodriguez evades arrest

PANAMA. Ex-Minister of Education, Salvador Rodriguez, who has been accused of embezzlement, emerged smiling from his anti-corruption hearing yesterday, still a free man.

Unlike his colleague, Belgis Castro who faces similar charges and is behind bars, Rodriguez remains at liberty due to astute thinking by his lawyer, Victor Almengor, who petitioned for habeus corpus the day before Rodriguez had to face the anti-corruption commission. This means that Rodriguez remains free from any type of restraining action by the authorities until the Supreme Court rules on the petition.

Both Castro and Rodriguez are accused of falsifying charges for work to remove fibre glass from the ceilings of 22 schools in Colon and of pocketing the funds.

Rodriguez said that all the documentation for works he had authorized was in order and that everything he authorized had also been countersigned by the Comptroller’s office as satisfactorily completed.