I continued my quest to find some 'normal' friends here in Panama, but have finally concluded that (amongst the expat community at least) there aren't any here. That this is a kind of 'wild west' place that people come to when a normal, regular life is not exciting enough for them. So I had best just enjoy the entertainment that they offer. Although not the Ku Klux Klan supporter, nor the Trump supporter who recently shared a video suggesting that Prince died as a blood sacrifice of the illuminati ... really, I am not making any of this up.
I would certainly avoid the very nasty end of the spectrum of people who make themselves a new life here. The paedophiles of whom I have been told there are plenty, but in Panama (at least in the poorer parts of the country) they can buy off the parents of the children they abuse, so even when their embassies know they are here, and know their history, they can do nothing as no-one is reporting any offence. There are also expats who try to defraud other expats - largely over property; I understand that quite a few expats have paid over relatively large sums to buy properties off-plan, only to find later that the so-called developer never had proper title to the land so the development never had a chance. Apparently the courts are very unwilling to take up 'expat-on-expat' crimes (probably because neither side will offer them a bribe - the legal system is very corrupt here), so the perpetrators tend to get away with it.
I was offered a financial product with a 16% return by an expat. No way I would have gone for it, but I was curious as to what was going on so asked him how it was possible to pay such a high return (plus his commission for selling the investment), and he replied that they lend the money on at 30%. so basically loan-sharking. I must have hidden my cynicism quite well as he then offered me 1% if I could sell such an investment to any expats. Don't call me...
I did see in the local newspaper that the Superintendent of Securities is investigating one financial group here, who are apparently offering a product which gives a 70% profit in 30 seconds. As I said, a real wild west kind of place!
On the larger scale however, the Panama Papers, there is some impact on regular lives - mine at least. The money I've saved since I've been in this job - effectively my pension - is mostly invested through a UK financial platform (and declared on my tax return!). Two weeks ago I tried to pay in some more funds, and was told they would not accept any more money from me because of my residency in Panama, now considered a high risk jurisdiction. I tried to explain that they had this the wrong way round, that the risk was in UK residents trying to invest offshore, not in non-residents trying to invest in the UK, but they weren't having any of it and I've had to go elsewhere. Meaning another appointment at the British Embassy to get another certified copy of my passport and rental contract to prove my identity and address to a new institution. All of which takes time, costs money, and is intensely frustrating.
There is now more than just the Panama Papers, however. I'm not sure how much of this will have reached the international news, but the US just ten days ago named two Lebanese-Panamanian brothers as drug kingpins, and put them and their 68 companies on the Clinton List. These companies include a bank, a luxury shopping mall in Panama City, a Sheraton hotel, a chain of department stores, a chain of electronics stores, and the largest chain of duty free stores in Latin America. The bank had to be taken over rapidly by the Panamanian banking authorities (although the US have now removed the bank from the list, having discovered that they were the ones to appoint the brothers when they locked up the previous owners...), the shopping mall is being wound up, and it seems that the other businesses will all have to close too, costing thousands of Panamanian jobs. The American Embassy sent out notifications to all US citizens living in Panama that they are forbidden to shop in any of these places, on pain of a fine of over $1 million (!), and the companies are unable to accept US credit cards. I didn't understand (apart from the bank and the duty free shops) how this would have much of an effect on them, but I went into one of the department stores yesterday morning just to see what was going on, and they told me they can no longer accept any credit cards, only cash, and I read that they are preparing fire sales of their stock prior to closure. One of the brothers was on the board of Panama City's international airport, resulting in a $630 million bond sale to fund its expansion having to be cancelled last week as Citibank pulled out. The bond sale later went ahead after the brother was removed from the board, but then only for $575 million and they had to offer a higher interest rate. So from being a real financial success story, Panama's fortunes seemed to have diminished almost overnight.
People are getting jittery too. There was a bit of a panic last weekend when none of the ATMs were dispensing cash for a while, and Friday evening a newspaper article from Curaçao went viral here reporting that two of the largest Panamanian banks (including mine) had lost their US correspondent banks (meaning the end for them, given that Panama uses the US$) ... turned out that the story was a load of rubbish, but still we are all waiting to see what will be next.
So is the classic shot of the city above the real Panama (and is it sustainable)? Or is that just one of these
hiding, some four streets away, the real Panama that looks like this?
