Tamburrelli arranged the purchase of the espionage equipment

The government of former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli purchased espionage equipment for at least $20.2 million dollars. The devices have now disappeared and the Security Council states they have no idea where it is.

The equipment was bought with the money from the National Assistance Program (Programa de Ayuda Nacional, PAN) for $13.4 million dollars, but this governmental office and the israeli company M.L.M. Protection Ltd. agreed on 4 upkeep sessions for the call interceptor devices and the computers, which costed  other $6.3 million dollars, an additional 50% cost of the acquisition.

According to the contract 045 of 2010, signed by the former head of the PAN, Giacomo Tamburrelli and the israeli entrepreneur Ofer Bar -that this journal had access to-, the State payed in 2010 the first $8.5 million dollars and $4.9 millions the year after. In 2012, another $1.2 million dollars were payed in maintenance and $1.1 million dollars in 2013. This year, another payment for $756 thousand dollars was made.

The operations of maintenace were to be effectuated by phone, mail and Internet, but in the agreement was also stated that if the technicians from M.L.M. had to check the equipment on site, the State would run with the cost of the flights and all the accomodation expenses.

The payments for the equipment began on 30 August 2010 through the National Bank of Panama (BNP), which transfered the money to an intermediate Citibank account in New York City. The money was then sent to Nunvav Inc. in an offshore subsidiary of the Western Bank in Barbados.

M.L.M. Protection manufactured and imported the equipment in less than 5 months. In a note from 10 December 2010, Giacomo Tamburrelli and the Treasury Inspector Gioconda Torres confirmed to the BNP the transfer of the money. By then, the devices had already been installed and five agents had been trained to use the equipment.

The contract establishes that the Fond of Social Investment (which Martinelli renamed PAN), would define the place where the equipment was to be received; the Ministry of the Presidency had to be informed of the use of this equipment. During that time, Demetrio Papadimitriu was in charge of that Ministry, succeeded by Roberto Henríquez.

The equipment included a laptop, a microphone, headphones, biometric identification system, video cameras, scanners and indicators of both psychological and physical human responses. The contract also established  the supply of softwares for infecting equipment of the suspects and for the gathering of information, that was carried out without any physical contact with the subjects that were spied.

The sophisticated equipment costed 25 times more than the one that was bought by the government of Martín Torrijos (for about $800 thousand dollars) and also disappeared.