Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel was behind the record 20-ton cocaine shipment that was seized by the U.S. Coast Guard off Panama's Pacific Coast last weekend, officials said Thursday.

The drugs, worth nearly $300 million, were found in containers on a ship that left Guyana and passed through the Panama Canal on March 15 on the way to the Mexican state of Sinaloa, said Panama's top drug prosecutor, Jose Almengor.

Coast Guard officials detained 11 Mexicans and three Panamanians during the seizure Sunday about 20 miles southeast of the island of Coiba off Panama's coast. The Mexicans will be taken to the U.S. to face trial, while the Panamanians will be jailed in Panama.

Almengor said the Sinaloa cartel has just begun to establish itself in Panama, which borders Colombia. The majority of Colombia's drugs move along Central America by boat or plane and then pass through Mexico over land before they are smuggled into the United States.

A day before the seizure, officials arrested Mexicans Jorge Alonso Nunez and Jose Ernesto Mondragon as they tried to leave Panama. Both men have been tied to the shipment and face drug trafficking and money laundering charges in Panama.

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