With its endemic corruption and proximity to Colombia, Panama was always going to have a drug problem. The tiny country has two unguarded coastlines and only the lawless jungle province of Darien separates it from its narco neighbour.
As a result, it has become a key route for the trafficking of hundreds of tons of Colombian cocaine every year.
But in the Panamanian capital today it feels as if a house of cards involving drug investigators, government officials and banks is about to come tumbling down.
Panama's top drug cop, Patricio Candanedo (right), resigned this week, saying: "I have resigned because I do not feel the conditions necessary to continue working."
That's a masterpiece of understatement. Candanedo, the most successful drugs prosecutor
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michael power reports from Panama on a country being ruined by cocaine, corruption and murder |
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the country has ever seen, may have just escaped with his life. The night before he resigned, a bomb scare was sounded when a suspicious Samsonite was left outside his office. It didn't explode, but the city's central hotel area was cordoned off for hours.
The same day, Franklin Brewster, Candanedo's closest colleague, died. He had fallen into a coma after eating a plate of fish, rice and coconut that investigators say was laced with rat poison.
Brewster ate his last lunch with five colleagues in the Sensitive Division - a wing of Panama's Technical and Judicial (PTJ) police headquarters, Panama's equivalent of Scotland Yard.
The food was prepared by his wife, and Brewster left it in his office fridge. A PTJ colleague is now suspected of poisoning him. The question is: why? The answer will 
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