Panama TAC president denies conflict of interest in daughter's appointment

Zaira Santamaría de Latorraca, president of Panama's Public Procurement Administrative Tribunal (TAC), has defended her daughter's appointment as director of Legal Advisory within a state body that oversees public contracts, asserting that no conflict of interest exists. Her daughter, Sherina Latorraca, assumed the role in April 2026.

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She is not in a place where jurisdictional decisions are made, nor does she have a signature. She is in legal advisory, only issuing concepts and passing them to the director, and the director is the one who decides and signs them.

Appearing before the Budget Commission, Santamaría acknowledged the appointment and detailed the steps taken to ensure its legitimacy. She explained that prior to her daughter accepting the position, she consulted both the Administration's Attorney General's Office and the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Information (Antai) to verify there was no legal incompatibility. Santamaría emphasized that her daughter does not hold a position involving jurisdictional decision-making or signing authority, but rather provides legal opinions to the director.

Santamaría clarified that the directorate where her daughter works handles general legal consultations from state entities regarding public procurement processes. This function, she stressed, is distinct from the oversight directorate responsible for resolving claims that could lead to appeals before the TAC. Her daughter's role does not involve claims, as that falls under a separate directorate.

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We, with respect to that directorate, only resolve claims that have not been resolved by them. My daughter has nothing to do with claims, because that is another directorate that has nothing to do with her and she is not the director.

Regarding the transparency of the appointments, Santamaría noted that her own position at the TAC was secured through a competitive process. She explained that her daughter's appointment was initiated by the entity's director, who sought her out due to a backlog of pending consultations while she was working in another state institution. Santamaría maintained she did not intervene in the decision and only learned of it after it was proposed, insisting she advised her daughter to await the formal consultations before accepting.

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I didn't even intervene, I didn't even know. When she told me, before she accepted it, I told her not to accept until I had completed the respective consultations, and in effect I did, in the interest of transparency and our good name.