Beyond the skyscrapers of the financial district, the problems that meet the eye are as plentiful as the country’s blissful havens.
The high-tech locks in the new lane of the Panama Canal, which links 1,700 ports by bridging the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, opened on 26 June 2016 amid pomp and ceremony.
In the last year, however, Panama has made headlines for more than just the canal expansion. In April, the world found out about thousands of offshore companies that the rich and powerful had set up in Panama City in order to avoid paying taxes in their own countries. The 11.5 mil- lion documents leaked to journalists were created by the law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, one of hundreds of firms headquartered in the Panamanian capital.
Panama is a sanctuary of nature and natural resources, but is the small Central American country a tax haven as well? The country is the second- largest financial centre in the Americas after Wall Street and the first in Latin America. Shortly before the leak, Panama had been taken off the Or- ganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s ‘grey list’ of countries that do not cooperate against tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing. At that time, the OECD had been urging the Pana- manian government to sign a com- mitment to the automatic exchange of bank information. Whether the goal was to produce real transparency or to improve appearances and pre- serve the industry, Panama signed with the OECD in May.
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Beyond the skyscrapers of the financial district, the problems that meet the eye are as plentiful as the country’s blissful havens.
