Yesterday The Costa Rica Star reported on $1 million destined for poverty housing in Costa Rica disappearing.

As prosecutors open bank accounts of the Arias Foundtion for Peace in search of a missing million dollar donation from Taiwan, the Central American Bank for Economic Development issued a statement Thursday that may clear up the mystery.

The Bank says the money, the second half of a donation for poverty housing in the western San Jose suburb of Pavas, never arrived.

The official bank view is that the money, meant to be deposited in a trust for the Housing Ministry in 2007, simply never arrived because then-President Oscar Arias cut diplomatic relations with the island Chinese nation.

But this will not stop the investigation, since the Arias Foundation received a grant from Taiwan in January, 2007. The question is simple: was this the second half of the housing grant?

But Prosecutor Juan Carlos Cubillo from the anti-corruption section of the Costa Rican court may have a difficult time finding out what the money was meant for, the Housing Ministry or the Arias Foundation.

Theoretically, prosecutors can use the Vienna Convention to obtain such information, but since relations were cut between the countries unilaterally by Costa Rica, the Taiwanese government may be understandably reluctant to give it.

Minister of Housing Irene Campos confirmed that OIJ detectives confiscated all the records having to do with the Taiwan grant and the housing plan for Rincon Grande in Pavas on July 25, 2008.

Commentary: This makes little difference to the poor of Pavas — they did not get their housing, anyway. In one of the big scandals of the Arias years, the money instead went to fund “advice” from surveys.

So former Housing Minister Fernando Zumbado, who is the subject of a separate investigation, may not be off the hook, even should the bank be correct. There is still $1.4 million to answer for.

But, then, neither is the Foundation, even if not connected to the Taiwan money. A separate probe is going on to find out if the peace group received as “irregular donation” from directors of the La Crucitas mine.

The granting of the permit, later rescinded in Costa Rican courts, of the gold mine was declared by Arias as “in the public interest.” Like the use of the Taiwan fund, many observers thought the issue dead.

But apparently an issue is never dead in Costa Rica until it is buried six feet under in the public consciousness.