THE UNITED STATES IS PROTECTING PANAMA'S BIGGEST FINANCIAL CRIMINAL

Who am I referring to here ?

(1) He is living openly in Miami, notwithstanding that a dozen pending cases, some criminal, have been filed against him in his native Panama, but American media have strangely refrained from reporting this fact.

(2) He was singlehandedly responsible for literally bankrupting the budget of the Republic of Panama, through massive corruption, kickbacks and payoffs.

(3) He, and his cabinet ministers, business partners, and other associates, illegally made many millions of dollars, through insider trading of securities, in the Petaquilla Gold Mine scandal.

(4) He laundered millions of  dollars, much of which was Colombian narcotics profits, for convicted Ponzi schemer, David Murcia Guzmán.

(5) His illegal surveillance program invaded the privacy of over one hundred Panamanian judges, opposition politicians, and prominent businessman, and their wives, and he forced their wives and girlfriends to engage in sexual relations with him, through blackmail. and threats of exposure.

(6)  He ordered Panama's regulators to ignore rampant money laundering in the country's banks and money service businesses, and insured that any civil suit brought by his opponents went nowhere, through bribes, intimidation, and the granting of favors to the judiciary, including many members of the Supreme Court of Justice.

(7) While in office, he associated with many prominent members of Panama's organized crime syndicate, which includes many players of Middle Eastern (e.g. Syrian) origin.

The individual who committed all these acts is the former Panamanian President, Ricardo Martinelli, who apparently has been a Confidential Informant for A US law enforcement agency for an unknown period of time, and is now enjoying the benefits of residing in Miami, with all his ill-gotten billions of dollars, so long as he continues to give up information on Panamanians engaged in criminal activity, including corruption. Indeed, Martinelli may have played a major role in supplying the evidence used to convict several major Panamanian government officials of late.

Martinelli has the proverbial "Get out of Jail" card in the United States, and Panama's new reform government is the loser. You could say that crime pays, when you have high-level friends in an agency of the US law enforcement community, that has little or no accountability to the US Congress, or the American public, for its conduct. Is the war on drugs that important that we continue to give the worst career criminals a pass, so long as they assist us ?