Legal case clouding Panama/U.S. commerce

Half of Panama’s population of children under the age of five is in grave danger of death from malnutrition. The country’s staggering 40 percent poverty rate is one of the worst in Central America.

The late Wilson Lucom reportedly left $50 million to a trust intended to aid these starving children according to a secret will revealed upon his death in 2006. Lucom’s Panamanian wife Hilda and her children from a previous marriage are contesting the will and over two years of legal haggling between the two parties has not resulted in the resolution of the case.

So far lower courts have ruled twice in favor of Richard Lehman, executor of Lucom’s estate, but the Supreme Court of Panama has agreed to hear the case amid charges of illegal tactics and corruption on both sides. Accusations and allegations fly back and forth as a reputedly dysfunctional system of justice attempts to deal with a weighty matter with far-reaching implications.
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