Local pornography connections

PANAMA. A former employee of a major distributor of pornographic sites told the Panama Star that his employer concealed the distribution of child pornography by constantly manipulating photographs of underage children.

Initial investigation by the division of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) that monitors Internet child pornography around the world produced no immediate results.

Meanwhile one researcher linked the operator with the acquisition of a teen magazine, and his claim of having sites running into the thousands, plus indictments and court cases in the US.

Subsequently the owner of the company wrote to a Panama Star writer and said: “Myself, nor any of my companies or companies I am partnered with, ever has or ever will have anything to do with child porn OR anything that’s deemed illegal* under either US/ CA or Panama law.”

“Our companies employ over 200 people and are full legit operations.”

“In Panama about 75% of our staff works in our call center.

“A portion of the calls we receive in our call center originate from adult oriented web sites however those are operated by clients and according to the US laws. As a matter of fact Visa and Mastercard both approve those web sites for processing, meaning they approve within their standards if the product can be sold or not.

“Our client lists varies from publicly traded companies to large mobile carriers such as Vodaphone in Europe, ATT in the US, 3UK in UK etc. etc.”

*Editor's note: the original email read “legal” instead of “illegal”.

See page 2 for news of service providers attempting to block on-line pornography traffic.