Word: panamas
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...Panamanian Free Trade treaties after some labor and environmental standards were added in. Peru has moved to enact these requirements, making it the most likely to pass muster with tree huggers and union lovers. But experts say there is little chance the other three - Colombia, South Korea and Panama (which has not yet passed laws similar to Peru's) - will see any action this year or next. And it is likely that they will have to be substantially rewritten in order to be considered...
That is, if the kids ever see the money. Lucom's widow Hilda, 83, the frail matriarch of Panama's prominent Arias family (a clan that has produced two of Panama's Presidents), with the support of her children is battling to get the will declared invalid. They say the will's U.S. executor, Florida tax attorney Richard Lehman, concocted the charity donation so he could split the money with other Lucom cronies. Hilda's Panamanian lawyer, Hector Infante, known for political connections and tough tactics, has pressed criminal charges against Lehman--even accusing him of having euthanized Lucom. (That...
Lehman insists that the Ariases, members of Panama's rabiblancos, or white élite, are just being greedy. They deny it, though they won't say how much of the money they would give to charity if they won. But Lehman says this tropical probate drama tests whether Panama's notoriously corrupt judicial system can be trusted to uphold the surge of legal contracts coming its way as the canal expands and Americans continue to move to Panama for cheaper living. "It's important that the poor children get this money and equally important that our legal system stop tarnishing...
These are heady days for tiny Panama. It is undertaking a massive expansion of the Panama Canal, luring billions of dollars in maritime and high-tech investment that could make it the Hong Kong of the Americas. But here's the other side: in the past few months, scores of toddlers have died of malnutrition in villages around the country. More than half of Panamanian children under 5 are at risk of suffering the same fate. That's why, say friends of Wilson (Chuck) Lucom, who died last year at 88, the eccentric U.S. millionaire left as much...
Even if the Ariases win, they risk becoming another symbol of Latin America's gaping chasm between a hyperwealthy élite and the abject poor. Panama and its reformist President, Martín Torrijos, may have a good business plan for the future, but the nation's near 40% poverty rate is a legacy of decades of banana-republic rule and dismal social spending. Hilda declined to speak to TIME on the record because the case is still pending, but her granddaughter Madelaine Urrutia, who sits on the board of a children's charity, insists, "We are a family with...