How Colon becamea hub for contraband and cocaine

In the Colón Free Trade Zone, near the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal, the dated and glass buildings are with brand names for I Perspex emblazoned electronics, perfumes and textiles.

- By Mat Youkee COLON

Behind loom vast warehouses and dozens of port cranes, while on the street, shop owners unload merchandise from shipping containers.

Established in 1948, the world's second-largest free-trade zone was envisioned as a wholesale redistribution centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, but it has become a global hub of counterfeiting, contraband and cocaine. In November, Europol arrested 49 members of a super-cartel centred on Dubai and accounting for a third of Europe's cocaine supply.

One of those arrested was Anthony Martínez Meza, son of a director of the Colón Free Trade Zone, and suspected of organising shipments from Colón.