Postcard: Panama

By Tim Padgett

These are heady days for tiny Panama. It is undertaking a massive expansion of the Panama Canal, luring billions of dollars in maritime and high-tech investment that could make it the Hong Kong of the Americas. But here's the other side: in the past few months, scores of toddlers have died of malnutrition in villages around the country. More than half of Panamanian children under 5 are at risk of suffering the same fate. That's why, say friends of Wilson (Chuck) Lucom, who died last year at 88, the eccentric U.S. millionaire left as much as $50 million in his will for poor children's charities in Panama. It's the largest private gift ever made here. The will doesn't single out which relief organizations will be recipients. But, as the director of a charity that may benefit says, it could have a "tremendous impact on our ability to save these children."

That is, if the kids ever see the money. Lucom's widow Hilda, 83, the frail matriarch of Panama's prominent Arias family (a clan that has produced two of Panama's Presidents), with the support of her children is battling to get the will declared invalid. They say the will's U.S. executor, Florida tax attorney Richard Lehman, concocted the charity donation so he could split the money with other Lucom cronies. Hilda's Panamanian lawyer, Hector Infante, known for political connections and tough tactics, has pressed criminal charges against Lehman--even accusing him of having euthanized Lucom. (That charge was dismissed.) Lehman has sued Hilda and Infante for defamation, but he no longer travels to Panama, fearing he would be arrested. Still, he says, "I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I gave up this case." It is now in Panama's Supreme Court, and a ruling could take months, if not years.

Lehman insists that the Ariases, members of Panama's rabiblancos, or white elite, are just being greedy. They deny it, though they won't say how much of the money they would give to charity if they won. But Lehman says this tropical probate drama tests whether Panama's notoriously corrupt judicial system can be trusted to uphold the surge of legal contracts coming its way as the canal expands and Americans continue to move to Panama for cheaper living. "It's important that the poor children get this money and equally important that our legal system stop tarnishing itself," says a respected Lucom pal who requested anonymity because he's also an Arias-family friend. Infante calls Lehman's charges that he's trying to buy a favorable ruling "slanderous" and accuses Lehman of conflicts of interest, like not initially disclosing a $500,000 debt he owes a Lucom firm.

A rough-hewn former U.S. diplomat who grew up poor, Lucom inherited his fortune from his first wife, a Palm Beach, Fla., heiress. After he married Hilda in 1982, he bought a 7,000-acre (2,800 hectare) ranch once owned by the Ariases. The sale of that property, now valued at up to $50 million, would fund his charitable trust.

Legal experts say the family is relying on technicalities to get the will annulled; so far two lower courts have ruled against the Ariases. But the fact that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case worries Lehman, especially since a former justice is being investigated for bribery.

Even if the Ariases win, they risk becoming another symbol of Latin America's gaping chasm between a hyperwealthy elite and the abject poor. Panama and its reformist President, Martin Torrijos, may have a good business plan for the future, but the nation's near 40% poverty rate is a legacy of decades of banana-republic rule and dismal social spending. Hilda declined to speak to TIME on the record because the case is still pending, but her granddaughter Madelaine Urrutia, who sits on the board of a children's charity, insists, "We are a family with a social conscience." Thousands of Panamanian kids hope so.