In 1903 the US bullied Colombia into giving up the province that became Panama. The plan was to create a nation to serve the interests of Wall Street
“In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”
The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.
.. JP Morgan led the American banks in gradually turning Panama into a financial centre – and a haven for tax evasion and money laundering – as well as a passage for shipping, with which these practices were at first entwined when Panama began to register foreign ships to carry fuel for the Standard Oil company in order for the corporation to avoid US tax liabilities.
.. In 1983, however, the system backfired slightly: General Manuel Noriega took power. For years, he had been a beneficiary of, and functionary for, the CIA, but he came to realise that Panama’s wealth was even better suited to an alliance with the Medellín narco-trafficking cartel of Pablo Escobar. In 1989, therefore, the US returned militarily, as it had eight decades previously, and – as Silverstein puts it – “returned to power the old banking elites, heirs of the JP Morgan legacy”.
.. “It’s important to recognise that offshore law firms like Mossack Fonseca do not operate in isolation; they rely on intermediaries, often other law firms or banks, to pass on clients and to provide support for the sophisticated cross-border structures.”