ML-Implode News - How a US president and JP Morgan made Panama: and turned it into a tax haven

"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 â€˜fiscal agent' in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation."
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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.
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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 MedellÃn 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".
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Although "Panama is one of the world's sleaziest tax havens, it is just part of a bigger global system", says Shaxson. "The United Kingdom runs a global network of overseas territories and crown dependencies that includes some of the world's biggest tax havens."

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How a US president and JP Morgan made Panama: and turned it into a tax haven