The US will provide support in missing drugs probe – Ambassador

The United States Ambassador to Panama, Mari Carmen Aponte confirmed to TVN Noticias that her country will help Panama to solve the disappearance of thousands of vials of fentanyl, a scandal that involves the health authorities and that is currently under investigation.

The  Attorney General, Javier Caraballo, confirmed that there were 19 thousand of vials that disappeared and spoke of some inspections that are carried out in different addresses of the CSS.

“At this moment we are carrying out the inspections and the prosecutors are verifying all the regulations and practices that surround the entry of fentanyl into the health center, and what is the flow that it takes until it reaches the hands of a doctor,” Caraballo reported.

“We are going to reconstruct all the facts and depending on the evidence that is gathered, we will be able to say if there is the participation or not of organized crime in this event,” said Caraballo.

The director of the Social Security Fund (CSS),  Enrique Lau Cortes, flatly denied that he is going to resign, after the scandal caused by the disappearance of thousands of doses of fentanyl from the institution.

“I am not going to resign so that we are clear, but obviously at the moment in which a director becomes inconvenient, the one who decides is the President of the Republic. If the President asks me for the position, of course, I will do it” he said.

He explained that after the fact was discovered, they went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the entity that is responsible for carrying out the that “could be criminal.”