politics

PRD candidate investigated

Courts have ordered Balbina Herrera’s immunity lifted in suits involving alleged criminal activities.

With six months remaining before the country’s presidential elections, Partido Revolucionario Democrático candidate Balbina Herrera is facing no less than four criminal investigations.

Following a complaint filed on Sept. 24 by member of the opposition Marilyn Vallarino, who has claimed that a food importer, in which Herrera owns shares, illegally imported 60,000 kilograms of onions from Holland in 2004.

In a separate issue, a public prosecutor specializing in intellectual property crimes requested to remove Herrera of her legal immunity after she allegedly plagiarized a political jingle coined by Chiriquí speaker Jorge Luis Castillo.

And on Sept. 16, courts allowed prosecutors to look into a complaint that Herrera exempted some 41 companies from paying taxes related to business contracts while she was the minister of Housing.

The fourth case, for which Herrera’s immunity was temporarily suspended, has yet to be published in the bulletin of the Electoral Tribunal, as is the custom.

So far, two of the requests for lifting the presidential candidate’s immunity were declared inadmissible.

One case involved a complaint accusing Herrera of placing campaign ads on a pedestrian bridge while the other claimed that she had received unauthorized campaign funding from the Venezuelan government.