Word: panama
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...PERVERSE ANNALS OF CRIME, FEW felons have matched the dizzying fall of Manuel Noriega: from Panamanian dictator to convicted drug dealer. He was still the ruler of his country when an American grand jury indicted him in February 1988 for narcotics trafficking. The following year the U.S. invasion of Panama led to his arrest...
...replaced the corrupt army-officer corps loyal to Noriega, is getting $20 million worth of U.S. training and equipment. Thanks to an accord reached last year, American investigators have access to secret Panamanian bank records whenever they suspect that accounts are being used to launder drug money. Now that Panama requires local banks to file meticulous reports on large deposits of cash, the cartels are no longer able to make millions of dollars disappear into a financial black hole. Efforts to set up similar laundering systems in Luxembourg and Uruguay have been thwarted, and some Latin dealers have been forced...
...good news is that Panama's democratic leaders, boosted by $1 billion worth of U.S. aid, have launched a drug crackdown within their own borders. Panamanian President Guillermo Endara was sworn into office on a U.S. Army base just hours after the American invasion, an act that has come to symbolize the close relationship between the Bush Administration and Noriega's successor. According to dea officials, Endara's willingness to cooperate with international antidrug efforts is helping stanch the flow of cocaine through Panama...
MANUEL ANTONIO NORIEGA'S CONviction came at an exceedingly high price. Washington's eagerness to put Noriega behind bars occasioned the controversial 1989 invasion of Panama that took the lives of 23 American soldiers and at least 500 local citizens. The seven-month, multimillion-dollar trial featured testimony from some 20 dope dealers, pilots and money launderers, much of it in exchange for reduced sentences, cash settlements and other favors. And although President Bush hailed last week's verdict as "a major victory against the drug lords," Noriega's conviction is likely to have little lasting effect on the overall...
...drop pearl earrings left by her departed Spanish lover and dreams of being honored by Fidel Castro -- "El Lider himself" -- on a red velvet divan. Instead, before dawn, she sights her dead husband, iridescent blue and "taller than the palms, walking on water in his white summer suit and Panama...