Panama’s oldest newspaper requests license extension

Gese, the company which includes Panama’s oldest Newspaper, La Estrella, and the “peoples paper” El Silo, has asked the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for an extension of the license.

This extension would allow them access to the US financial system.

The United States prohibits their nation’s companies and citizens from continuing commercial or financial relationships with anyone on the OFAC sanctions list. However, the Treasury Department has licensed both newspapers (El Siglo and La Estrella) allowing them to access to markets. The license will expire at midnight on January 5th 2017.

Eduardo Quirós, the president of Gese  says that since Abdul Waked, the main shareholder of the editorial group was added to the OFAC sanctions list, La Estrella has had to cut 30 percent of its staff.  Quirós explained that now, the jobs of the remaining 250 workers are at stake.

Quirós said Monday, December 5th that they have maintained contact with officials of the government to express their concerns. He continued “The next 30 days become a defining stage for a newspaper (El Silo) with more than 30 years of being ‘the newspaper of the people’ and for the oldest newspaper in Panama and the third­ oldest on the entire west coast of the American continent.”