The emporium in Latin America of the ‘getter’ of the Spanish construction companies

The complex Ocean Reef Islands It is presented as a construction and engineering challenge. Erected on two 190,000-meter artificial islands, this refuge of capricious fortunes in the heart of Panama offers views of the Pacific, a heliport, private marina and space for docking yachts.

The Panamanian-Spanish lawyer Mauricio Cort bought two penthouses in the exclusive enclave in 2013. He paid more than four million dollars [unos 3,7 millones de euros] for these properties of up to 508 meters. This is confirmed by dozens of contracts and transfer records to which EL PAÍS has had access.

At 54 years old, Cort built an emporium in the Central American country consisting of shopping centers, luxury homes and million-dollar urban projects. The investments in brick were being forged while the lawyer allegedly collected bribes of up to 10% from construction companies in exchange for awards. The Spanish had a hand with the governments of Ricardo Martinelli (Panama), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) and Mauricio Funes (El Salvador). In his client portfolio, or what is the same, of companies that knocked on his door to obtain the manna of the public works of the corrupt power, FCC appeared. The Spanish construction company has declined to give its version to this newspaper, which has also not been able to obtain Cort’s testimony.

With a degree in Law and Political Science and an MBA from the University of Valencia, Cort made stealth his main virtue. And proof of this is that he allegedly moved the money from briefcases and construction companies through a convoluted racket of accounts and shell companies (without activity) in Panama, Switzerland and Andorra. His financial scheme operated between 2010 and 2014.

To explain the investor’s first stop, we must look to the west of Panama. The Westland Los Pueblos shopping center has 230 stores. About thirty are restaurants. Through the opaque Panamanian company Fundación FCJJ, Cort acquired a 3,762-meter lot in this complex of open-air stores and franchises in 2013. He disbursed three million dollars, according to the promise of sale contract with the firm Desarrollo Oeste, SA.

The lawyer also landed in 2013 in a partnership to develop a real estate project. The cornerstone of the business was a 4,000-meter plot of land valued at 12 million. Cort participated with six million 50% in this initiative, according to the contract.

The Star Bay tower is a glass swarm of offices more than 60 stories high. It has a five-star hotel and casino. In 2013, the lawyer bought two properties in this building on Balboa Avenue in Panama for 1.2 million.

Next destination: Pedro González Island. Located in the Las Perlas archipelago, in the Gulf of Panama, this enclave also aroused the lawyer’s investment appetite. In 2012, he disbursed $500,000 through his Panamanian foundation FCJJ to participate in a project that planned to build “76 real estate units,” according to the documentation.

The contracts also reveal that the power lawyer signed an agreement in 2010 to acquire a $220,000 apartment in the Panamanian district of Bella Vista. He did it through the shell of his instrumental society Camino del Rey. A screen integrated into the financial tangle of this lawyer who also controls the Panamanian Glock Foundation, where since 2011 his two children have been listed as beneficiaries in the event of death, according to his records.

The analysis of his movements in Andorra – where Cort managed four accounts between 2010 and 2013 that raised more than seven million – reveals prominent gaps. A transfer of one million that the lawyer ordered from the Andorran financial institution to buy a lot of apartments in Panama went to Jayland Consultants. It is a company based in the tax haven of the Virgin Islands. And it has among its five shareholders Federico Suárez Cedeño, who was Minister of Public Works of Panama during the presidential term of Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014). And it is precisely this last politician – a former president sentenced to more than 10 years for money laundering – with whom Cort allegedly had a direct connection regarding briefcases and construction companies, as the former Latin American director of FCC acknowledged in 2019 before two prosecutors. , Eugenio del Barrio.

The former executive of the construction company also admitted that the company spent 40 million in commissions to win tenders in Panama between 2010 and 2014. FCC obtained seven awards for 434 million dollars after hiring Cort, as revealed by this newspaper.

The financial racket of the ‘door opener’

One of the four accounts of achiever In Andorra, a deposit registered in the name of the Uruguayan holding company Arados del Plata, SA, collected 3.5 million dollars from Switzerland in 2012. Cort justified the money within the framework of a commission agreement with FCC. Specifically, he told the bank that he received funds for each work that the Spanish construction company acquired in Panama.

Together with FCC, the lawyer also provided his services as open doors of power to Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant at the center of the largest bribery scheme in Latin America. 677 million were supposedly left to corrupt wills.

Between 2001 and 2016, the firm provided briefcases, perks and trips in Latin America to 145 politicians and senior officials in exchange for public works awards, the main source of income for this construction group, which had 168,000 employees in 28 countries. .

In exchange for the rinses, the Brazilian giant rewarded the achiever. The accounts in the Pyrenean principality of the lawyer received 7.5 million dollars from the companies that Odebrecht used to buy wills: Aeon (Panama) and Klienfield (Antigua and Barbuda).

So much transfer of millions, transfers to tax havens and purchase of real estate aroused the suspicions of the BPA (Private Bank of Andorra), an entity that – despite being investigated today in Andorra for the laundering of its clients’ funds – warned of the suspicious transactions of the elegant achiever. The financial institution’s compliance department, a kind of internal police dedicated to preventing unspeakable money from sneaking into the bank, agreed in May 2013 not to accept Cort’s financial “operation.” The lawyer then decided to transfer his balance, six million euros, to the UBS bank, “where he had no problems,” according to a BPA employee in an email. “Just for the record, this client represents a loss of six million dollars,” the worker warned in the message.

Indicted along with two of his instrumental companies since last March for money laundering in a court in Andorra, a country of 77,000 inhabitants shielded until 2017 by banking secrecy, Cort managed his financial tangle in the Pyrenean country between 2010 and 2013 without proving his funds. and transactions. “Significant formal defects are detected in the contractual documentation and invoices,” states a report last January from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Andorra (Uifand), the public body of the small State that investigates money laundering.

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