"Don’t waste your time trying to open a bank account in Panama. You’d do better trying to get to Mars – it’s quicker," the country’s head of state, Ricardo Martinelli, says with a smile as he underlines how his centre-right government works worldwide to clamp down on money laundering.
But that doesn’t make him anti-business. "Seventy per cent of my cabinet are businessmen and entrepreneurs, active or retired," he says. The 59-year-old, who won a five-year term as Panama’s president in a landslide victory in 2009, is keen to present his business credentials and is concerned about the bureaucracy and delays which can hold firms up.
