Panama FM denies alleged links to Colombian drug trafficker

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Panama's first Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro on Monday rejected charges of having business contacts with one of Colombia's top drug traffickers.

"I have never met nor had any contact with Mr. Nelson Urrego in all my 50-year life," Lewis Navarro said in a statement. "Statements that I have met this person for trade or other reasons in Panama or anywhere else in the world are absolutely false," he added.

Urrego, who has been held on money-laundering charges since September 2007, told a newspaper based in the United States city of Miami that he had twice met Lewis Navarro, who had tried to pressure Urrego into selling his private island, Chapera.
Lewis Navarro said, "I do not have now and have not in the past had any interest in buying the island," adding that he was not linked to Panama's prosecutors' decision to investigate Urrego.

Urrego opened his Panamanian bank accounts in 2002, but says he had no problems with the Panamanian authorities before he rejected Lewis Navarro's bids to buy Chapera. Urrego's lawyers have asked Panama's prosecutors to force Lewis Navarro to testify on the matter under oath.

"Everything I have said is 100 percent true," Urrego told newspapers. "There is something fishy going on. Someone is lying and I don't see any reason for them to do so. I just wanted to live a clean life in Panama, and I have done nothing illegal," he said.

Urrego has offered to take lie detector tests on the issue.

Panama's main anti-drug prosecutor, Jose Abel Almengor, said the case began in 2005 after the now-bankrupt Banco Continental alerted the authorities about potential financial misdeeds.

Urrego has been charged with drug trafficking both in his native Colombia and in the U.S. state of Florida.