PANAMA'S CORRUPT SUPERINTENDENT OF BANKING WAS BAD ACTOR IN KPMG CENTRAL AMERICA SCANDAL

Alberto Diamond Rodriguez

 If you read our recent exposé about misconduct of KPMG in Latin America, CPA says KPMG  Shortchanged its Latin American Partners and then Fixed the Courts, denying them Access, you probably wondered which KPMG executives ordered the amoral, and obviously illegal, denial of partner compensation. At the center of the misconduct is someone whom you may be familiar with, if you follow financial crime in the Republic of Panama.


The bad actor is the former Panamanian Superintendent of Banking, Alberto Diamond Rodriguez. Diamond , while acting as president of KPMG Central America SA, presided over the slashing of partner compensation, at KPMG offices in the region, to only three per cent (3%), less than one tenth of what their contracts provided.  When the partners filed suit, in El Salvador, Diamond ordered that bribes be paid to not only members of the local judiciary, to delay the cases for many years, but he personally saw to it that the settlements forced upon the partners amounted to only pennies on the dollar, as to what they should have received.

There were also issues regarding covert payments, to US-based partners, made from accounts in offshore tax havens, which were not disclosed to American regulatory or tax authorities.  

It is believed the reason that Alberto Diamond hastily left Panama, when Martinelli's presidential term expired, because he feared that criminal charges would be filed against him should he remain. Appointed largely because he was related to Martinelli through marriage, he was totally unqualified to serve as Superintendent of Banking, While in office, he not only failed to indict a single Panamanian bank on money laundering charges, be openly bragged that he facilitated deposits of approximately seventeen billion ($17b) US Dollars [known as Balboas in Panama], coming in, largely in the form of bulk cash, from Venezuela.

Diamond also extorted large sums from Panamanian bankers, whose banks he often threatened to indict for money laundering, due to some phantom regulatory violation he would charge them with, unless $50,000 was paid to him.

We shall be making further inquiries into Diamond's multiple criminal acts, while serving as president of KPMG Central America, and report back to our readers, as we further explore the scandal.