Yesterday, I received a phone call from Panama. It was Jorge Motley, former head of Interpol Panama. He called me to let me know that he had been exonerated of all charges against him. Former attorney-general José Antonio Sossa had sued Motley for trying to document Sossa’s involvement in money laundering. With this legal decision, Motley’s ten-year quest to clean his name ends. See the details of the Malocchio case in an old article below.
CORRUPTION: An Evil Eye Opens Up Again
By Miren Gutiérrez*
ROME, Feb 19 (IPS) – The departure of a Panamanian attorney-general has led to the review of a massive international money laundering case. Operation Malocchio (’evil eye’) as it was called, was “one of the biggest” anti-money laundering operations ever launched in Italy, says former prosecutor Giovanni Salvi who was in charge of the investigation together with his colleague Pietro Saviotti and investigating judge Otello Lupacchini. Investigation began in 1996 into hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the smuggling of 900kg cocaine out of Latin America. By 1997 the network was set to ‘import’ 5,000 kg of cocaine and buy a bank in Belize, according to a report by Espresso magazine in Italy. Operation Malocchio was launched after Italian authorities carried out “an information exchange with the U.S. FBI,” said a report issued in 2001 by the anti-mafia investigative unit (DIA) of the Italian ministry of interior. The aim was “dismantling a complex crime group involved in the trafficking of significant consignments of cocaine coming from South America, as well as in money laundering and in the re-investment of huge capital through international financial channels.” The probe led to several arrests in 1998. In 2001, 15 people were convicted for laundering money from narco trafficking, including kingpin Fausto Pellegrinetti. But he escaped and is still a fugitive. Appeals against the sentence were rejected.Accomplices in Panama, and also in Brazil and Belize (a tiny Central American nation with a population of 273,000 bordering Guatemala and Mexico) had a prominent role in the money laundering and re-investment scheme, according to documents seized by the Italian police.
In October 1997 Italian authorities asked Interpol in Panama for information that could link three suspect telephone numbers with well-known Panamanian politician Alfredo Oranges.
Oranges was then a serious contender for presidential candidacy in the 1998 elections from the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). Interpol Panama confirmed that the numbers belonged to Oranges..
The Financial Analysis Unit (UAF) in Panama then discovered that money from outside the country was being transferred regularly to and from the local bank accounts of the company Clark’s Investment Corp. Oranges was authorised to sign documents on behalf of Clark’s Investment, the UAF said.
This corporation “has served as bridge for a series of banking transfers that cross several countries without an apparent motive or commercial activity justifying them,” said the UAF. Some of the transfers were higher than a million dollars.
Edwin Arias Castillo, a Clark’s Investment executive and Oranges’ associate, was also treasurer in another corporation France Mistral, S.A., where Lillo Rosario Lauricella – kingpin Pellegrinetti’s right hand in Latin America – was vice-president, the UAF noted.
“Vast amounts of money from outside were deposited through Panamanian corporations in local bank accounts, where they would stay for a couple of days and later were transferred to a bank in another country,” Jorge Mottley, former head of Interpol Panama told IPS in a telephone interview. Mottley had joined investigation of the Panamanian ramifications of the case.
