I don’t often praise EU, but let’s give credit where credit is due. The stupid “dirty money blacklist” of several US territories, Panama and Saudi Arabia didn’t go through. Vera Jourova credits mainly lobbying of these countries, I hope there was some sanity on the side of the EU member states involved as well.
Panama has signed all the international tax treaties (like OECD CRS), there has been no public case of aiding money laundering by a Panamanian bank (contrary to a few German and Luxembourg banks for example).
What is important to understand that this has _nothing_ to do with Panama papers. Panama papers was about offshore jurisdictions (i.e. having a company in Panama a moving money to the Panamanian company). But a Panamanian company can have a bank account wherever a bank would open one (Juncker has been investigated by the EU that he allowed Panamanian companies to launder money in Luxembourg while he was a prime minister – meaning, the money actually never left EU, they stayed in Luxembourg banks!).
Panamanian banks do probably the craziest and most thorough KYC/AML I have ever experienced and I think they are doing sometimes too good of a job. I highly doubt that with the difficulty of sending wires through correspondent banks, it would be possible to launder any money without the knowledge and aid of US-based correspondent banks, because they are _required_ for any dollar transfers. Panama uses US dollar and all international wires have to go through FED registered bank.