Figueres Coming To Town!
Former president, José María Figueres Olsen, will be coming to Costa Rica after all, says today's edition of the Spanish daily Diario Extra.

However, the former presidents visit is not to appear before a legislative commission to answer their questions on his role in the accepting of us$900.000 in fees from the French telecommunications firm, ALCATEL, before it was awarded the telecommunications contract to install in the country 400.000 GSM cellular lines.

The reason for the Figueres visit is to attend the wedding of his daughter, María Eugenia Figueres Altman, to legislator for the Movimiento Libertatio (ML) party, Mario Quirós Lara.

The Extra says that their sources asked to remain anonymous. The daily says that the source is good and that the former president has decided to attend such an important occasion in his life.

José María Figueres Olsen, son of  José María Figueres Ferrer 0r "Don Pepe" who is regarded as the 'father' of Costa Rica leading the country in the 1948 birth of the "second republic" and serving three terms as president, has been living in Switzerland since 2003. The former president's mother is a Swiss national and he opted to remain in the European country following allegations of corruption in the AlCATEL-ICE scandal.

Figueres was contracted by H.F. Desarrollos Interdisciplinarios S.A. and admitted to receiving a payment of us$906.000 in consulting fees from the company that is owned by Roberto Hidalgo, who had been an advisor in the 1994-1998 Figueres administration and who is named as president of the Foro Economico Mundial before deciding to leave Costa Rica for Spain.

Figueres received the payment a couple of years after leaving the presidency for his consulting work on telecommunications in Costa Rica that led to ALCATEL being awarded the GSM contract from the state telecom, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE). The ALCATEL contract was worth us$149 million dollars.

Former legislative deputry and secretary general of the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) party, Carmen María Valverde, also received a similar payment from the Hidalgo firm. Carmen just happened to be the sister of ALCATEL Costa Rica president, Edgar Valverde.

Figueres has refused to come to Costa Rica following the treatment that former president, Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría, received. Calderón is under investigation for is role in the CCSS-Fischel scandal, while Rodríguez in the ALCATEL-ICE scandal.

Both former presidents were arrested and spent time in the La Reforma prison before being released to house arrest and the current conditional bail while prosecutors advance their investigation that should lead to a court trial sometime in the future.