Party Billed TSE for Phantom Talks

Already under intense scrutiny for the questionable billing of public funds to pay a candidate-owned advertising agency for work done in the 2010 election campaign, the Libertarian Movement is again under the magnifying glass. (See previous article.)

This time, it was investigative reporting by the country's largest newspaper, La Nacion, that uncovered the fact that the Libertarians had billed the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) for public funds to reimburse the party for 210 million colones spent for seminars. The problem is that the seminars never happened.

Political parties can bill for limited political expenses during campaigns--as long as they are legitimate. The Tribunal then reimburses the parties which, presumably,  pay back political contributors from a public fund.

In this case, the supposed meetings were held between February 2008 and April, 2010, to educate party workers in the electoral process--a perfectly legitimate function under TSE regulations. Almost all the courses were, according to the bills, imparted by three instructors, each giving 60 courses.

But, during a three-week investigation, La Nacion journalists say they found that the instructors said they gave no seminars and would not have charged the party if they had. Alexander Burns and Francisco Perez said they had given no courses while a third instructor, David Segura said he gave some--gratis.

The courses were supposedly under the direction of the Liberty and Progress Institute, created in 2007, whose president is Otto Guevara, the 2010 Libertarian presidential candidate. The Libertarian  policy institute grew out of the non-partisn Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

When the paper began to check with some who had supposedly attended the seminars, they got a surprise. Not only did those attendees deny having received instruction, but one of them, La Nacion reporter Esteban Oviedo, was on the list.

He was astonished to find, according to names on the list, that he had attended a Libertarian course in the southern San Jose suburb of Desamparados on April 9, 2008. He had been at work at the paper that day and immediately notified his editor. Oviedo, on grounds of journalistic ethics, recused himself from the story.

Perhaps the most surprised were the alleged instructors. Alexander Burns, when presented with the list of seminars, saw that he was down as having presented one on April 27, 2009, in Desamparados. He showed his passport to a La Nacion reporter proving he had been in the United States on that day.

Perez, also, was out of the country when the list said he was giving a class on March 15, 2009, at Osa. His passport shows he was gone from March 7-21.

The newspaper article ended by asking the rhetorical question, "What did all the participants in these supposed seminar have in common?" They all had signed a list that they had attended a speech by Otto Guevara in January, 2010, at Pueblo Antiguo in the San Jose suburb of Uruca.

Such lists of meeting attendees, signed by the participants, are common here, especially at political events, in case the party wants to follow up with information, printed matter or other purposes.

Libertarian Party treasurer and former lawmaker Ronald Alfaro admitted that "we made some errors" in the billing but was unable to explain exactly how they had happened. A special investigative committee of the Legislative Assembly is also looking into a 250 million colon loan of businesswoman Carla Gomez to Guevara's businesses during the 2010 campaign.

Meanwhile, Social Christian Unity floor leaders Luis Fishman and his counterpart lawmaker of the Citizen Action Party, Elizabeth Fonseca, say that the probe of the Libertarians in no way effects their parties' coalition with the Liberatarians in the Legislative Assembly. The three parties combine to wrest congressional control away from President chinchilla's party.

Although possibly the result of serious problems in the Libertarian party's accounting, the incident of the phantom seminars--and the previous scandal involving soliciting of public funds for expenses incurred with an advertising agency owned by Guevara-- raise troubling ethical questions.

This is the party, after all, that insists on minimal government regulation of every facet of national life, especially business. Oddly, the foundation billed the party for 194 training sessions, spread over more than two years' duration, all at once, just a month after the elections.

The elections watchdog Tribunal accepted the bills last January but has held up payment due to doubts raised by the La Nacion revelations.