Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today we're covering Panama in our spotlight series that focuses

on the compliance challenges and progress in a single country.

My guest today is David Mizrachi.

David was born and raised in Panama and is based now in Panama City, but he's also admitted

as a lawyer and has practiced in the United States. He leads Trace's partner firm in Panama,

MDU legal, and is widely recognized by his peers and clients for his transactional and dispute resolution

skills. Thank you for joining me today, David. Thank you, Alexandra. I'm happy to be here.

Why don't you just start by describing for us the level of bribery, if any, I guess every country has some, that people might expect to find in Panama.

Well, if you look at the current prosecution trends in the sense of looking back at what's going on in the law enforcement arena, you will probably get quite scared because a lot of high-ranking

former government officials are being prosecuted for alleged crimes involving bribery or

involving corruption. So the media coverage locally is always being showing cases of that nature.

That, of course, is only part of the picture.

Panama in the region, or judging Panama from the perspective of the entire region is probably not the worst offender,

which doesn't give it a clean bill of health, but given the fact that we are a,

we have a longstanding tradition of foreign investment and of trade.

We're a trade hub.

While corruption is something that must be taken into account and, of course, avoided,

it is not the central issue in doing business in Panama.

What forum would you say it is most likely to take when it does need to be taken into consideration?

It's always better, just like when you're dealing with a patient, preventive medicine is better

than corrective medicine. We tend to be on the side of being compliance-minded and ensuring that all the teas are crossed,

...