The lawyer Roberto Ruíz Díaz, presented this Friday, July 1, before the Public Ministry, a criminal complaint against the General Administrator of the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), Noriel Araúz and the director of the Merchant Marine of the entity, Rafael Cigarruista, for the issuance of a patent in favor of the Gibunker 100 ship, under an operating license from the company Sea Energy.
According to Ruíz Díaz, the officials could be committing crimes against the public administration, since the Gibunker 100 ship, which has been operating in Panama for a year, does not meet the age, according to the keeling, which is established by law and must be a maximum of 15 years, to provide fuel transportation services, however, the AMP introduced it, omitting that information that is so important”.
Once the ship enters the country, says the lawyer, it is included in the Sea Energy company, a company that was sued for the Sea Lion case, a vessel that caused a fuel spill in Taboga in June 2020, and to which the same AMP had canceled his operating permit.
“It is striking that precisely this administration, with Noriel Araúz at the helm, had canceled Sea Energy’s operating license and suddenly appears with its license, but where introducing a ship that does not meet the necessary requirements to provide transportation services of fuel,” says Ruíz Díaz.
According to Díaz, this situation constitutes a threat to the environment, since the existing regulations regarding the years of keel laying, seek to prevent old ships from arriving to provide services within the jurisdictional waters of the Republic of Panama, and what we are seeing is that the AMP administration is authorizing the entry of ships that are being discarded in another jurisdiction because they cannot provide that service.
“That is why it is worrying that this ship, being old, could produce this type of damage or spills in the jurisdictional waters of the country,” he said.
Given all of the above, the lawyer says that it will be up to the attorney general to admit it, since it is a direct criminal complaint against the officials, “because they are the ones who will have to answer for the issue of abuse of authority and violation of duties as officials, and for the possible falsification of public documents by omitting information as sensitive as setting the year of the keel laying, in these cases it is a technical issue, but the AMP knows it very well”.
He mentioned that he took advantage of the diligence to extend another complaint against the AMP administration in the case of Panama Ports, where the new price that PPC had to pay the state for the movement of containers should be established in accordance with the extension that was given.
Regarding this case, Ruíz Díaz said that he sent a note to the administrator Araúz, where he asked if the new revision of the rate had already been made, to which the administrator, on March 30, replied that he was waiting for a response from the Comptroller that he had requested in August 2021.
However, the Comptroller’s Office denied what the administrator stated and gave him a copy of his reply in the same month of August 2021. “This represents a clear violation of the Law by the AMP administrator, of not exercising the functions that they are responsible for reviewing the rates that the ports have to pay for the movement of containers”.
