Don't fret, kissing one's wife at Christmas is not illegal
I think we'll just go with the facts on this one. Back when Richard Fifer (Chairman of the Petaquilla Minerals (PTQ.to) and vendor of the Panama Copper project to Inmet) was a youth of 18, he spent his days selling marijuana and cocaine in the US controlled canal zone of Panama. Y'know, just like any other scumbag who wanted to get rich and didn't care how it happened. That is until he got caught, arrested, thrown in jail and sent up before the judge where he pleaded guilty to the charges of both possession and distribution.
He was given a sentence of 18 months in jail, of which 90 days was under lock-up and the other 15 months suspended under four years of probation. He kept his nose clean during his probation period and was eventually discharged from probation by the courts. So how do we know all these details about a past that Richard Glenn Fifer Jr has always been at pains to deny ever happened? Simple; we've read the court documents, checked them for veracity and found them to be factual. Now you can check them out too, by downloading a PDF of the docs from right here (the file is 4.8Mb, so give it a bit of time, yeah?).
UPDATE: A couple of people have now written in saying they've had trouble downloading the PDF file (while others have had no such problem). If you're having problems, mail me and I'll send you a copy by return (but make sure your mailbox can handle a 5Mb dump).