Status: Living File (v1.0) (Last Updated, July 14, 2025)
Risk Tier: Tier II – Leverage Hub facing high external Pressures & Internal Fragility,
Use Case: Redundancy Node, Latin American Legal Residency, Offshore Gateway
Editor’s Note: While Panama remains, under our model, a “Tier II” country, in spirit it’s far closer to Tier III. It functions, yes—but it doesn’t belong in the same conversation as Uruguay or other resilient Tier II jurisdictions in the region.
In our assessment, Panama barely scrapes over the line. If the U.S. pulls support, exerts pressure, or if Panama becomes a flashpoint between Washington and Beijing? It’s toast.
The legal regime is paper-thin. Its approach to bodily sovereignty is weak in urban zones and nonexistent in rural ones. Rape, assault, and even murder are often uninvestigated, especially outside the cities. Justice is cosmetic. Protection is for sale.
Yes, Panama has a functioning banking system, a fast path to residency, and the basic hallmarks of a Tier II jurisdiction. But the suspension of constitutional rights, systemic violence against migrants and women, and the normalization of lawlessness make its Tier II status deeply debatable.
Where we land is this: Panama is fine for a three-day offshore strategy session.
But if you have even a shred of respect for your wife or daughters?
You shouldn’t be calling this place safe. Or sovereign.
Panama’s Identity Crisis
Panama is a paradox: sovereign on paper, leveraged in practice.
It is a dollarized economy without control over monetary policy. A logistics linchpin that depends on peace in distant hemispheres. A tax haven masquerading as a democracy. And it sits at the center of every geopolitical chessboard that matters — not as a player, but as the board itself.
If Uruguay is boring and safe, Panama is seductive and strategic. It’s the place where offshore strategies are whispered over cocktails, and where American influence is not just present — it is embedded. The canal is the arterial line of global trade. The U.S. dollar is the currency. The great seal of the United States always looms large.
This is not a country that wins by brute force. It survives by being too useful to destroy. But utility isn’t immunity.
In the last month alone, Panama suspended constitutional guarantees in a western province, borrowed $1.24B to plug a fiscal hole, and began courting Mercosur to reduce its dependency on the United States.
It knows what time it is.
You should too.