Ricardo Alberto Arias (born September 11, 1940, Panama City, Panama) was the Panamanian Ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 2004 to 2009.
Arias holds a Bachelor of Science degree in foreign service from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and a Master of Laws degree from Yale University.
[citation needed] From 1973 to 1978, Arias was a Professor of Fiscal Law and Administration Law at the Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua in Panama.
In March 2001, a majority of shareholders elected Arias the new president of the paper La Prensa, which had previously been critical of Arias' party, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD); he also forced out Peruvian investigative reporter Gustavo Gorriti.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, which had awarded Gorriti its International Press Freedom Award for his work with the paper,[1] called the election, and the resignations and demotions of investigative staff that followed, a "boardroom coup" that left "the once feisty paper a shadow of its former self".