Mitt Romney and Bain Capital on the cover of the Rolling Stones

Dr Hook sang about being on the cover of the Rolling Stones. Well, Mitt Romney made it there and CBC is reporting that the Rolling Stone's Bain-bailout report is upsetting Romney's big night.

So now we have the story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital on the cover of the Rolling Stones. It is a huge concern when a politician makes millions after a company goes bankrupt. Just like it was when Newt Gingrich made all that money off Fannie Mae. Only that cash grab was welfare fraud because their bail out was with tax dollars.

The Rolling Stones article claims what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place.

What Bain Capital did to American Pad and Paper, KB Toys as well as to Bealls Brothers and Palais Royal are three examples of this pattern of load with debt then suck them dry Bain kept repeating across the country. The Rolling Stones article explains:

Sadly, minus that tax break, Romney's debt-based takeovers would have been unsustainably expensive. "In the majority of these deals," Turner says, "the tax deduction has a big enough impact on the bottom line that the takeover wouldn't work without it."

Thanks to the tax deduction, in other words, the government actually incentivizes the kind of leverage-based takeovers that Romney built his fortune on. Romney the businessman built his career on two things that Romney the candidate decries: massive debt and dumb federal giveaways. "I don't know what Romney would be doing but for debt and its tax-advantaged position in the tax code," says a prominent Wall Street lawyer, "but he wouldn't be fabulously wealthy."

Take a typical Bain transaction involving an Indiana-based company called American Pad and Paper. Bain bought Ampad in 1992 for just $5 million, financing the rest of the deal with borrowed cash. Within three years, Ampad was paying $60 million in annual debt payments, plus an additional $7 million in management fees. A year later, Bain led Ampad to go public, cashed out about $50 million in stock for itself and its investors, charged the firm $2 million for arranging the IPO and pocketed another $5 million in "management" fees. Ampad wound up going bankrupt, and hundreds of workers lost their jobs, but Bain and Romney weren't crying: They'd made more than $100 million on a $5 million investment.

Then in 2000, right before Romney gave up his ownership stake in Bain Capital, the firm targeted KB Toys. The debacle that followed serves as a prime example of the conflict between the old model of American business, built from the ground up with sweat and industry know-how, and the new globalist model, the Romney model, which uses leverage as a weapon of high-speed conquest.

In a typical private-equity fragging, Bain put up a mere $18 million to acquire KB Toys and got big banks to finance the remaining $302 million it needed. Less than a year and a half after the purchase, Bain decided to give itself a gift known as a "dividend recapitalization." The firm induced KB Toys to redeem $121 million in stock and take out more than $66 million in bank loans – $83 million of which went directly into the pockets of Bain's owners and investors, including Romney. "The dividend recap is like borrowing someone else's credit card to take out a cash advance, and then leaving them to pay it off," says Heather Slavkin Corzo, who monitors private equity takeovers as the senior legal policy adviser for the AFL-CIO.

Bain ended up earning a return of at least 370 percent on the deal, while KB Toys fell into bankruptcy, saddled with millions in debt. KB's former parent company, Big Lots, alleged in bankruptcy court that Bain's "unjustified" return on the dividend recap was actually "900 percent in a mere 16 months." Patnode, by contrast, was fired in December 2008, after almost four decades on the job. Like other employees, he didn't get a single day's severance.

Under Romney's business model, leveraging other people's debt means you can carve out big profits for yourself and leave everyone else holding the bag. The only ones who profited in a big way from all the job-killing debt that Romney leveraged were Mitt and his buddies at Bain, along with Wall Street firms like Goldman and Citigroup.

This is corporate Communism at it’s best. It is a war on the Constitution and the Free Market. It pays off politicians to deregulate the market so corporate criminals can rape, pillage and plunder while giving a kickback to the politicians that enabled them.

The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney

Off Shore Tax Evasion:

An LA Times story follows Romney's recent acknowledgement to the National Review that he established funds in the Cayman Islands for the explicit purpose of helping wealthy investors avoid paying American taxes. Bain currently operates at least 138 shell companies headquartered in the Cayman Islands, which, like Panama, has long been associated with both legal and illegal tax machinations and money laundering.

While many of Bain's early investors lived outside the U.S., shell companies in Panama and the Cayman Islands can also help American taxpayers invest in U.S. companies without accruing a tax bill with the IRS. By establishing personal offshore entities, Americans can pose as foreign investors and avoid paying U.S. taxes on investments in American firms.

"Even a U.S. investor pretending to be a foreign investor, by using a Bermuda or Cayman Islands shell entity, can avoid U.S. tax this way," Wilkins said. "And we know that's going on. We know that U.S. investors are evading taxes by pretending to be foreigners."

The United States ratified a free trade agreement with Panama in 2011 which was negotiated by President George W. Bush and shepherded through Congress by President Barack Obama. The deal was heavily criticized by tax experts for preventing the U.S. from cracking down on improper tax schemes in Panama. Romney's trade policy platform calls for more agreements similar to the Panama pact.

Intelligence agencies used Panama shell companies to defruad $1.5 billion from Banco Ambrosiano through the Vatican bank in 1982. Here in Western Canada we know a convicted money launderer named Kourosh Ziaee who defrauded banks in Florida out of a million dollars. At least some of the money was laundered through the Italian bank account of a corporation Ziaee set up in Panama.

Sheldon Adelson,, Chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp, is a major donor to the super PAC supporting presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney against President Barack Obama and plans to spend US$100 million (RM340 million) on Republican candidates in November’s elections.

Adelson, who owns casinos in Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore, began this campaign season as a major donor to Newt Gingrich before Gingrich dropped out of the Republican presidential race. He has since switched his support to Romney and last month was in Jerusalem with the candidate when Romney met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Adelson also strongly supports.

Las Vegas Sands Corp, controlled by billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, is the target of a federal investigation into possible violations of US money-laundering laws, the Wall Street Journal reported August 6 2012.

The Los Angeles US attorney’s office is looking into the casino company’s handling of the receipt of millions of dollars from a Mexican businessman, later indicted in the United States for drug trafficking, and a former California businessman, later convicted of taking illegal kickbacks, the Journal said, citing lawyers and others involved in the matter. The transactions date from the mid-2000s.

Hells Angel with top secret clearance

Stephen Tucker the nose picker in the picture has left the Hells Angels in 2009 for undisclosed reasons. It is believed he left on good terms. When he left the Hells Angels he was secretary for the Fayetteville, North Carolina chapter. He was also a government contractor at Fort Bragg.



In 2009, Nick Prianos became a full patch member of the Fayetteville, North Carolina chapter. Sources claim he became the new secretary for the chapter at that time. Just like Tucker, he is a contractor for Fort Bragg. Prianos is employed by DS2 (Defense Support Services) where he provides contract work on military aircraft, as well as track and wheeled military vehicles. According to the Department of Defense, he holds a top secret clearance. That would be a red flag and a huge concern. A member of a criminal organization that sells drugs holding a top secret security clearance in the US military.

Fulton, Kentucky Hells Angels president plead guilty to distribution of crystal meth

Someone sent in an unclassified document that was law enforcement sensitive not for publication. Although it’s two years old and has been posted on the Internet, I’m not going to post the document because I’m not a Wikileaks kind of guy. Classified documents are classified. I will however, take some information from it and see what I can find on Google to expand our gang registry.

First stop is Trent Willet, a former marine and former president of the Hells Angels Kentucky, Fulton chapter. In 2009 he plead guilty to distribution of methamphetamines and was sentenced to 60 months in prison. Let us remember that back in the day, methamphetamines meant speed. Now it means crystal meth which is a highly addictive and toxic drug that is destroying lives and communities.

In Canada we don’t normally hear about Hells Angels drug convictions in the States but I think it’s important to highlight a few to clearly show the criminal organization pattern continues. We know that Greg Domley, the Salem Hells Angels president as well as the East Coast President was convicted of trafficking crystal meth.

This is a picture of Trent in his younger days. It doesn’t even look like the same person. This much we do know: Trent is a member of the Hells Angels and was convicted of trafficking crystal meth. He’s on the Hells angels Big House Crew and a Free Trent the drug dealer campaign was launched.

Billy Bowden get 8 years for drug trafficking

Billy Bowden, a former Hells Angels associate has just been sentenced to eight years for drug trafficking. He admitted to selling a kilo of cocaine to an old friend who turned out to be a police agent. Bowden, 36, was one of 13 people arrested in February 2012 as part of "Project Deplete."

Police seized about 6.9 kilograms of cocaine, 4.6 kg of crack cocaine, and 2.7 kg of methamphetamine. They also seized more than 9,800 tablets of ecstasy, about 500 tablets of oxycodone and about 900 grams of marijuana. The investigation went back to August 2011.

Crack and crystal meth. That is the biggest problem we now face in our communities. Mike on Crime is reporting Bowden joined the Hells Angels in July 2004, but was kicked out of the gang in 2006 following an internal dispute. That was when they killed his friend to let the Ontario Hells Angels take over the drug trade in Thompson and told him to suck it up or become a target.

Rumor had it he had crossed over to the Rock Machine and is very popular in his home town of Brandon. One news source claims one of the arrests in Project Deplete was of a guy named Jamie Christopher Korne who used to be a member of the Rock Machine but claimed to be president of Vagos in Canada. Vagos denied the guy ever became a full patch member let alone president or that Vagos are in Winnipeg. We do know Sean Brown was the National President of the reborn Rock Machine but there was a coup and they kicked him out “because he was a pussy.” Turns out that wasn’t entirely true. I am told what really happened was a bunch of young thugs took over the club and wanted to turn it into a gang which they did.

We know that Sean Brown ended up going over to Vagos in Toronto not Winnipeg. News reports claim he didn’t want to provoke the Hells Angels and wanted to stay out of Quebec as not to rekindle old animosity there. The news report claimed he wanted to stay away from the drugs which I can personally confirm they had posted on the RM web site when he was president. After the coup they took that part off and as we can now see in project Deplete, have returned full scale to the business of selling drugs.

We need to remember that in the year 2000, the founders of the Rock Machine as well as a few key leaders crossed over to join the Hells Angels to protect Mom Boucher’s interest in the club right before he went to prison. In 2008 Sean Brown relaunched the Rock Machine with the same Eagle’s head just with different colors – white and black instead of yellow. It actually looked awesome. So Sean Brown relaunching the Rock Machine in 2008 and the young thugs who kicked him out and took it over shortly thereafter means that it’s new kids and they are back in the business of selling drugs. I think Sean Brown had the right idea. Too bad the coup couldn’t see that. Unfortunately, Vagos uses the same Nazi lightening bolts as the rest of them.

I just don’t get this juvenile obsession with omg patches that grown men have. If you want to ride go ahead. Just don’t sell drugs or use a patch to bully people. There is no L & R in the Hells Angels or any of their puppet clubs. Bacchus isn’t an MC. They’re just a drinking club who sell drugs for the Hells Angels in PEI.

Foreign ownership of Canadian Oil

It’s bad enough we don’t refine our own oil before putting it in a pipeline and shipping it out of Canada. It’s bad enough that the Enbridge Partnership is a Houston based company. It’s even worse that we might let Communist China buy our oil rights. Now we’re even considering giving our oil rights to Kuwait of all places. The insanity just never stops. Back in the day we had military invasions. Now we have corporate takeovers.

How about Canada keeps it’s own oil rights? There are a lot of protests going on in Central America right now about Canadian mining and oil companies going in and making money off their resources. Part of the protests are a little bit misguided. They claim when people in these small towns start getting money, they end up spending it on alcohol, gambling and prostitution. We don’t want that big city crime coming to our small town communities.

Basically they’re protesting against economic prosperity because they don’t think people there are socially responsible with their money. The thought is well meaning but a wee bit misguided. The real concern is Canadian companies going in and getting rich off their resources. Keep in mind this isn’t Canada or the Canadian government doing this. It’s a private company registered in Canada. So now the dirty dogs of Wall Street are starting to use Canada to further their real objective of Global Imperialism. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s why those dirty dogs want to privatize Mexico’s oil and get their greedy little mitts on all that revenue. So they can bring back Corporate Imperialism which as we have seen, ultimately leads to Corporate Communism. From one extreme to the other.

So now we’re going to do the same thing to ourselves. We are going to sell our oil rights to a private corporation based in a foreign country and once again go back to the days of being a colony. As far as I’m concerned, those days are over. We are a free republic now. There is no turning back.

At least Kuwait gives their own people a kickback in the form of lower gas prices. Not us. We let these oil companies rape us both ways. First they get rich off of our natural resources, then we let them screw us at the pump with obscene gas prices. That is so wrong.

We should nationalize our oil. We should keep those profits in Canada and use that money to pay down our debt, build roads, schools and hospitals. Imagine how we could lower taxes for every citizen if we nationalized our oil and used those profits to offset tax revenue. Oh that’s socialism you cry? No it’s not. This corporate imperialism is because we know where that leads.

At first glance the idea of building an oil pipeline isn’t a bad one. Until we take a look at Enbridge’s past history in Michigan and Wisconsin. That is a colossal concern. So that’s when we in BC say, hey, we want a little more cheddar if we are going to take all the environmental risk. After all, building a pipeline through BC doesn’t really create any jobs in BC once the pipeline is built.

As soon as we say we want a share in the profits, the Alberta premier says that’s crazy. So we say F you, we want to pull out of the deal. Then Harper say no, F you. You don’t have a say in the matter. I just rewrote the rules and paid for a smoke and mirrors committee then gave all the decision making powers to my Cabinet. Now that doesn’t sound very democratic. In fact as Michael Moore once said, it sounds a lot like the other ism they keep warning us about. Enbridge’s misinformation about the environmental risk isn’t very reassuring either.

BC Rail and BC Hydro

By far the biggest political corruption locally isn’t BC Rail it’s BC Hydro. I’m not talking about the privatization of Terasen Gas. That was just duplication. You already have guys from BC Hydro going to people’s homes to check the Hydro meters. Now you have another set of guys going to people’s homes to check the gas meters as well. It was more cost effective before.

Yet the privatization of Terasen Gas hasn’t caused the same avalanche of problems the privatization of the power brokers that sell power to BC Hydro has. That is how Gordon Campbell totally screwed us for generations to come. Most people, don’t realize BC Hydro was privatized. There was such a huge public outcry they split BC Hydro in two, privatized Terasen Gas and “left BC Hydro alone." Or so we thought.

In reality they left BC Hydro public but privatized the power brokers that sell power to BC Hydro at inflated rates. That is the inherit problem with privatization of public services. A private corporation is mandated to make a profit. It comes as no surprise to discover that the private power brokers sold power to BC Hydro at inflated rates. After all, that’s their mandate. To make a profit by ripping off consumers. Just like the big oil companies.

There has been media reports of BC Hydro's colossal debt that is ballooning out of control and keeps getting deferred. We are told that taxpayers will have to eventually bail them out. Either that or they will rationalize the deficit to privatize it completely so that black op will finally become complete.

BC Rail was the same old. The corrupt politicians sell off public assets to their friends at fire sale prices. Their friends then raise prices and make more money giving themselves huge salaries and a kickback to the dirty politicians that did the devil’s deal. We see the exact same thing with Gordon Campbell’s privatization of the power brokers. These are the same guys that were accused of false billing with Enron in California.

The Smart Meter scam is now completely out of control. On wood framed houses, putting a new smart Meter on an old wood framed base is a documented fire hazard. The logic solution, aside from abandon the project all together would be to start putting smart meters in new homes not ones already built. That would instantly deal with the liability of the fire hazard and it would be cost effective. When you build a new hoe, you need to put in a new meter anyways. That would only make sense.

Unfortunately, making sense isn’t on the table. They want to charge more for daytime usage so they want to proceed unilaterally with these flawed smart Meters that are setting wood framed houses on fire. Clearly, BC Hydro is no longer publically accountable and it should be. This should be Adrian Dix’s first order of business. To reverse the decision to privatize the power brokers that sell power to BC Hydro at inflated rates. If the power brokers and BC Hydro were once again the same entity as a public company, that devastating legacy of snowballing debt that Gordon Campbell has left us with would instantly be stopped.

The BC Rail scandal is peanuts in comparison. However, it would be nice to follow up on the initial money laundering charges that were dropped in the plea bargain where Gordon Campbell’s top aide were accused of laundering drug money through Victoria real estate. That should be publically examined.

Law Enforcement: Good versus Evil

I don’t want to distract from the euphoria of the moment regarding the fantastic job the police has recently done with the Kelowna Hells Angels’ clubhouse raid and the arrest of David Giles as well as the Kelowna Sergeant at arms. I do however, think it’s important to put it in perspective and look at the dual aspect of the struggle between good versus evil.

First is the external struggle that we can clearly see. Crack and crystal meth are horrible drugs. They are very damaging and very addictive. As a result they destroy lives and devastate communities. Some people argue that if the Hells Angels didn’t sell those drugs, someone else would. I disagree. Crystal meth is new to the East coast. Greg Domey was the Salem Hells Angels president as well as the entire east coast president. He was convicted of trafficking crystal meth. The Hells Angels were bringing crystal meth from California to Massachusetts.

Clearly the Hells Angels were the ones bringing crystal meth to a new market. Likewise in Canada, the Hells Angels are the ones using their big city bully powers to flood small towns with crack. They are creating new markets and destroying lives and communities in those small towns. In Kelowna Dave Habib posted a warning to parents on his facebook about drug dealers putting crystal meth in kids pixie sticks. Yet it was the Hells Angels who were caught running a huge crystal meth lab in Kelowna that was a major production point for the Okanagan.

Flooding the streets and small towns with crack and crystal meth is a clear example of good versus evil. It is an external struggle that we can clearly see. Yet there is another internal aspect of that struggle that is just as real but is much harder to see. Chicago was famous for it’s problems with organized crime. Al Capone and the organized crime were one thing. Corrupt politicians and police officers were another.

In all fairness, I don’t think we have the same problem with rank and file officers on the take as Chicago did. No doubt we have some. Edmonton PD was accused of leaking information to the Hells angels. Yet cases like Rob Sidhu and Ken Houston aren’t that common and even those were with former police officers. Yet I do think we have a problem of internal corruption involving politicians and government agencies that does rival Chicago back in the day.

Case in point, the leaked document showing that illegal drugs are no longer a priority for Canadian border agents. That is treason and shows how government agencies, controlled by corrupt politicians can do serious damage to the hard work of good law enforcement officers trying to make a difference. The Western Wind cocaine seizure is a prime example of that. A high ranking officer steps in to squash an important investigation. That is suspicious to say the least.

Due to a lack of resources, Canadian border agents have been told to stop looking for illegal drugs leaving the country and instead focus on stopping the export of illicit nuclear material and stolen cars. The directive, contained in an internal memo to Canada Border Service Agency man-agers that was obtained by Postmedia News, is unlikely to make officials in the U.S. and other countries very happy. But analysts say that in an age of finite resources, the agency has decided it makes more sense to target areas where it thinks it can make a difference.

Nuclear material and stolen cars? That is bizarre. The Harper government is the one trying to reopen the sale of Candu reactors to high risk countries giving them the capability of making nuclear weapons just like they did for China and India.

The pot for cocaine trade is a huge problem. For a government agency to be told not to prioritize that is treason. As is the Harper government issuing that mandate in the name of budget cuts. They are the ones that cut funding to the RCMP and the gang task force and gave $69 billion to the banks for a bailout they didn’t need. Since the banks are making such a big profit, they can start paying back that bailout instead of filling Stephen Harpers campaign contributions.

So we need to talk about corrupt politicians like Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney as well as the corrupt agencies they control which stifle the hard work of good law enforcement officers trying to make a difference. Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper are not corrupt because they are Conservatives. They are corrupt because they aren’t. They say one thing and do another. Brian Mulroney sued the Canadian government for slander for claiming he received a kickback from Airbus. He point blank lied about his relationship with Karl Schreiber and thereby defrauded Canadian tax payers out of $2 million. That is just the tip of the iceberg to Brian Mulroney’s corruption. Harper cutting funding for the RCMP, Gang Task force, Coast Guard, Prisons and Border Agents is another concern. So much for law and order.

We do have to look at Operation Fast and Furious,. It isn’t just an Obama thing but it is also an Obama thing. Just like George Bush SR.’s cocaine trafficking out of Mena Arkansas was also a Bill Clinton thing. Clinton’s ties to the crash of the BCCI is a serious concern we need to look at because we saw it repeat itself in Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious. That kind of internal corruption is harder to see but just as real. The struggle between good and evil continues on both fronts - externally as well as internally.

Rats leaving a sinking ship

Front page of today’s Vancouver Province was about more Liberal MLAs leaving a sinking ship. A guy at work sees the headline in the lunchroom and says to me, hey, you’re up on politics. Why are all the MLAs resigning? I just laughed and said rats leaving a sinking ship. Haven’t you seen the polls? He shook his head and said no. They know they’re not going to get re elected so they’re jumping ship. Also because that one MLA who crossed over is brining the BC Rail case back to court and they’re all running for cover.

Today’s news is about Kevin Falcon quitting. That’s interesting. He runs for the leadership of the party, loses, then quits politics. Why do I find that suspicious? He better not be planning on going over to the Provincial Conservatives. That guy is a Gordon Campbell clone and is part of the problem. We can’t have him poison a good thing. The last thing we need is for Gordon Campbell’s rats to infest John Cummings new hope.

Breaking news is George Abbott, Mary McNeil and John Les have just added their names to the list. I have two points to make. John van Dongen and Dave Hayer are good men. John van Dongen was a good AG. He crossed over to join John Cummings conservatives and started legal action about BC Rail. He’s solid. Dave Hayer is less confrontational and simply announced he’s not going to run for re election. He’s finishing his term that he was elected to. Dave Hayer is a good man. His father was a reporter who was murdered for reporting about the Air India bombing.

The other rats jumping ship are Gordon Campbell scum. Kevin Falcon is not right wing. Stop saying that. He supported the gas tax and the HST. John Cummings doesn’t. John Cummings support small business and a free market. Kevin Falcon and the rest of his Gordon Campbell scum do not.

The other point I’d like to make is that this current mess is not Christy Clark’s fault. She was those rats best chance to resurrect the party after Gordon Campbell drove it to drink. We can’t blame Gordon Campbell’s mess on Christy Clark any more than we can blame Brian Mulroney’s mess on Kim Campbell. The nose dive in the polls is a natural consequence of cruel arrogance the whole party has displayed.

Canadian Taxpayers Federation slams retiring BC MLAs’ $13 million pension haul

Meanwhile Christy Clark is in the news as Geoffrey Cowper, chair of a review of the justice system, released his report claiming that it was time for "systemic and wide-ranging change." The report claims the B.C. criminal legal system needs a major overhaul, five more provincial judges to reduce case backlogs, and a radical new management system. A new management system. I’m not sure what that means but if it means making BC Judges publically accountable then I’m all for it. That is long over due. Peter Leask should be hanged and Anne McKenzie should be fired.

Human torso found in Niagara River

Sympatico news is reporting that Niagara Regional Police announced a female torso was recovered from the river in Niagara Falls, near the Rainbow Bridge border crossing. Investigators said the discovery was not related to the ongoing investigation into the death of Hua Guang Liu, whose body parts were discovered in two Toronto-area parks in recent weeks.

Police said passersby spotted the floating torso on Wednesday and alerted officers. Police have not recovered any limbs or the woman's head. Niagara police said an autopsy suggests it belongs to a middle-aged Caucasian woman, who was the victim of homicide. Tragic.

We know the Niagara Hells Angels were intensely involved in the drug trade there. I wonder if this homicide is drug related. Hua Guang Liu's estranged boyfriend, has been charged with second-degree murder in that case. She was a mother of three starting her own business. Very sad.

Kelowna Hells Angel turns himself in to Police

Brian Oldham, the sergeant-at-arms for the Kelowna Hells Angels has turned himself in at the Burnaby RCMP detachment Tuesday after a Canada-wide warrant was issued for his arrest following David Giles' arrest. Oldham has been charged with possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking.

The charges follow a 21-month investigation into allegations that marijuana grown in B.C.'s southeast was being sold in B.C. and elsewhere to fund the import of cocaine to Canada. The investigation "benefited from contributions" from Mounties in the Okanagan, as well as from U.S. law enforcement, Mexican federal police and Panamanian authorities.