A Panamanian trial court has sentenced two former officials of the Miguel de la Borda communal board in Colón province to eight years in prison for embezzlement, the Attorney General’s Office announced. Felícito Teherán Núñez, the former community representative (representante), and Milena Esther Polo Martínez, the former treasurer of the communal board, were found responsible for mismanaging public funds between 2009 and 2014.
What Happened
According to a press release from the Procuraduría General de la Nación, the tribunal convicted both former officials on charges of peculado (embezzlement of public funds). The crimes occurred while the two were leading the communal board of Miguel de la Borda, a small corregimiento that serves as the seat of the Donoso district in Colón province.
Beyond the prison terms, the court imposed an additional five-year disqualification from holding public office, to take effect once the defendants complete their sentences.
Prosecutors established that the mismanagement caused patrimonial damage of $29,505.35 to the communal board. The Attorney General’s Office attributed the loss to the way the two former officials handled funds during their time in office.
Background
The period in which the crimes occurred, 2009 to 2014, coincides with the administration of President Ricardo Martinelli and overlaps with one of Panama’s largest investigations into communal board irregularities. For more than a decade, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has been probing the diversion of more than $247 million in circuit-based budget allocations (partidas circuitales) that 70 deputies distributed among 187 communal boards and municipalities during that five-year span, according to audits by the Office of the Comptroller General.
The scale of that investigation has been enormous. In February 2018, the Comptroller’s Office, then led by Federico Humbert, delivered 223 boxes of audit results to prosecutors. The probe was stalled for nearly 11 months in 2020 while the Supreme Court of Justice issued a ruling that would determine the course of the investigations. In December 2022, the Court granted prosecutors an additional year to complete their work, amid constitutional challenges filed by the defense teams of those under investigation.
It remains unclear whether the Miguel de la Borda case forms part of that larger investigation, as the Attorney General’s press release did not specify. However, the conviction follows a similar recent ruling in Coclé province, where two former officials of the Río Indio communal board received 60-month sentences for damages of $301,959.52, also dating from the 2009-2014 period.
Miguel de la Borda is the administrative seat of the Donoso district in Colón. According to the 2023 census conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Census, the community is home to just 2,408 residents.
What This Means for Panama
The sentence adds to a slow but growing number of convictions tied to the management of communal boards during the 2009-2014 period, when vast sums of discretionary funds flowed to local governments across the country. Each conviction represents tangible progress in a judicial process that has taken well over a decade, complicated by legal challenges and repeated delays.
For Panamanians, the case underscores both the scale of the alleged diversion of public money at the local level and the difficulties authorities have faced in holding officials accountable years after the fact. The combination of prison time and disqualification from public office signals that courts are willing to impose meaningful consequences on local officials convicted of misusing community funds.
Observers will be watching whether further convictions follow, particularly in connection with the much larger $247 million investigation. With the Río Indio conviction in Coclé and now the Miguel de la Borda case in Colón, a pattern of rulings suggests the long-running investigations may finally be producing results in the courtroom.
This story was originally reported by La Prensa.