Panama’s ports, a booming route for cocaine trafficking

Colombian and Mexican cartels control the drug trafficking business in Panama. They’ve turned the isthmus into a key corridor, a highway along which cocaine moves towards the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. They use every resource available to them: the Panama Canal, seaports, free trade zones and even the Panama Canal Railway. If there’s a connection, they already have it on their radar. These criminal organizations have expanded their reach across various port terminals, becoming masters of shipyards and routes. At the same time, they have established operational branches on other continents to ensure the steady flow of their merchandise.

In the 1990s, drug trafficking cases in Panama’s ports could be counted on one hand. Today, 50 criminal organizations have been tracked throughout six Panamanian concessioned ports on both coasts, according to reports from the country’s Specialized Prosecutors’ Offices for Drug-Related Offenses. The groups are experts in infiltrating shipments.

“Local criminal organizations work with international cartels like that the Sinaloa Cartel and the Clan del Golfo, which finance logistics and coordinate internal operations,” Joseph Díaz, an attorney from the Specialized Prosecutors’ Offices, tells EL PAÍS.

Along with Asia, Europe has emerged as a customer base for the criminal organizations operating in Panama. These routes have strengthened due to the high value of cocaine in those regions, especially as demand in the United States declines — a fall attributed to the rise of fentanyl produced domestically and in Mexico.

The cartels’ diversification is indicative of new criminal order that spares no expense and is motivated to gain control over its routes, from ports and free trade zones to faraway countries that offer the promise of even higher profits.

“Criminal organizations perceive this illicit business as a borderless global activity that allows them to fund and expand their illegal activities,” says Alejo Campos, regional director of Crime Stoppers for the Caribbean, Bermuda and Latin America.

Maintaining these routes requires infiltrating governmental institutions, the private sector and civil society, and maintaining strategic alliances at every level. “Traffickers have infiltrated nearly every area, giving them a complete operational picture and the ability to act with total security,” Campos says.

The current administration of Panama’s National Customs Authority has uncovered several internal groups engaged in irregular activities and corruption. According to a customs official who requested anonymity, “One group was involved in the illicit trade of alcohol and cigarettes. Another was linked to tax evasion through courier services. The third is connected to organized crime, which seeks to exert control over customs officials who provide port services, operating the cargo scanners and scales.”

Drugs on the high seas

In 2024, more than 117 tons of drugs were seized in Panama, mostly cocaine. More than 10% of annual drug seizures take place in ports. Last year, 15,375 packages were found as a result of 44 operations. Of these, more than 17,600 pounds of drugs were found in containers with export products that originated in Panama and were bound for countries like Italy, France, Uruguay, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, El Salvador and India, according to Customs Authority records. Drugs were found hidden in sacks of coal, among pineapples, in the false bottoms of tractor-trailers and packed in with metal furniture and electronic devices.

The other 15,968 pounds of seized cocaine were to be shipped through Panama, and had come from Latin America. These shipments were largely bound for Europe, in addition to Australia and India, and hid the drugs inside food products, heavy machinery, scrap metal, and furniture.

The growth and transformation of criminal organization in ports has been made possible by several factors. The first is the recruitment of employees, from cargo operators to security personnel, and workers familiar with shipping routes, such as planners, who have access to ship schedules and container destinations. Then there are the relationships that are formed with the key link in the chain: the officials responsible for inspecting cargo.

Traffickers have also taken advantage of the lack of training among judges who are responsible for confirming (or not) prosecutors’ charges and ordering preventive detention — all while dealing with a range of cases, from domestic violence to organized crime. This knowledge gap is one of the most frequent complaints of prosecutors, investigators, lawyers and port managers.

Judges “wait to see men loading black suitcases into shipping containers before they declare preventive detention measures,” says one state attorney, who asked to remain anonymous. Such criteria make it nearly impossible to stop trafficking, as criminal organizations are well aware of blind spots within vast container yards. Despite the fact that most ports have strict security protocols, including high-resolution cameras installed in shipyards, such lenses often capture mere silhouettes of cars traveling through yards where containers are located, movements that can easily be mistaken for work routines. Such ambiguity makes it difficult for prosecutors to prove their accusations.

In the space of a few minutes, criminal groups are able to insert drug-filled suitcases into shipping containers. It’s done a few hours before vessels set sail, which limits the time available to authorities to check for contraband. Conversely, the prosecutor’s investigative work, which is meant to bring traffickers before the judge, requires linking together compelling facts and examining staff schedules and stations in order to tie them to the alleged crime.

“I’ve seen several people apprehended and taken before the judge who were granted precautionary measures, and then returned to the port to get their jobs back,” says a former port manager who requested anonymity.

Given the lack of technological resources, which hampers the prosecutors' ability to establish guilt, along with weak judicial oversight, port administrators struggle to remove workers suspected of involvement in trafficking due to union protections. “Because of union regulations, the port has to keep the worker’s position vacant for one year,” says Díaz. In addition, unions play a key role in the decision-making processes regarding shift changes.

Additionally, administrators face challenges in replacing labor in cargo handling. “We see individuals under investigation being rehired by the same port or another. Some who have already served sentences for drug trafficking work in the same position,” admits circuit prosecutor Joseph Díaz. In two years, the former port executive documented with photographs and videos 31 cases of suspected container contamination (containing drugs), in addition to 36 employees whose bank accounts were suspended by the local bank for failing to justify their excess funds.

Panamanian connections in Europe

The expansion of criminal groups has led them to establish their own connections in Europe through nationals who evade Panamanian authorities and oversee the arrival and distribution of shipments. “They are the extended network that handles cargo reception, money laundering and logistics,” says Minister of Public Security Frank Ábrego.

Such individuals can start out as entry-level employees and work their way up the ladder to reach high-ranking positions in illicit organizations. They often keep a low profile. “Some are university graduates and have naturalized through marriage, which later, makes them difficult to extradite back to Panama,” says Jonathan Del Rosario, Panama’s former minister of public security.

The presence of these Panamanians in Europe means criminal organizations have “control of the entire drug chain, from the moment it enters Panama until it reaches its destination, which translates into complex structures,” explains Javier Caraballo, former attorney general. “They have companies to move cargo and containers, and they take advantage of the lack of equipment as well as weaknesses in cooperation between countries,” adds Del Rosario. “Europeans are reluctant to share information because of data protection laws,” continues Del Rosario. And so, criminal organizations have been able to gain greater control over the use of ports and logistics in Panama, expanding routes and making detection and official oversight more difficult.

From early 2017 to 2023, the European Union seized 18,553 pounds of cocaine coming from Panama, making it the third-largest source country (14%) after Ecuador, with 181,342 kilos (24.6%), and Colombia, with 184,330 kilos (33%), according to United Nations data. Over those six years, Europe confiscated 595,830 kilos of cocaine from 14 Latin American countries, valued at $23 billion.

Changes in port trafficking

Panama’s ports have become strategic points due to the constant movement of containers — eight million annually — handled primarily by six ports since 2009: Balboa, PSA, and Almirante on the Pacific, and Colón Container Terminal, Manzanillo, and Cristóbal on the Atlantic. From the perspective of Panama’s maritime and port sector, the country and its logistics hub are exploited by criminal organizations, despite Panama not producing a single gram of drugs. How are they able to operate with such impunity?

Former prosecutor Caraballo, who began his career working in drug crimes on the Atlantic coast, says that in the past, drug traffickers set up front companies that carried out legitimate exports. “When the company gained credibility, they began using it to ship drugs,” he says. During this era, port employees played a secondary or nearly non-existent role. Colombian cartels exercised total control over trafficking, using Panamanians to oversee commercial and logistical operations.

One of these Panamanians is a man who is now about 60 years old and originally from the Caribbean city of Colón, epicenter of the country’s drug trafficking. He asks to be identified simply as Mandraque, a word that locally, is used to refer as someone who is deceitful. He shares his account of how the business operated when it was still in its infancy. According to Mandraque, he used to buy bicycles with cash in the free trade zone, which he invoiced under the name of a third party. In collaboration with the criminal organization that employed him, he transported the bikes to a warehouse, where drugs were packed into their tire tubes and then covered in grease to mask the smell. “The Colombians wanted routes and they would say to you, ‘I have 110 pounds for the United States,’ and you told them where they could send it,” he says.

Those traffickers, he says, arrived on the Panamanian coast in “small, silent motorized canoes, transferring the drugs from one boat to another and then hiding them on the beach.” This method, surprisingly, has changed little over time. When seizures began at the turn of the century, traffickers started sending drugs in refrigerated containers with perishable goods. This forced authorities to think twice before carrying out intrusive searches that could spoil cargo in the case of a false alarm.

In 2008, a tactic referred to as “the rip-off” or “gancho ciego (blind hook)” became popular. The tactic, which is still in use, consists of opening the back doors of the container and packing in suitcases full of drugs in a matter of minutes. It is a technique that “requires the participation of port workers, since drugs do not enter as a company’s merchandise, but rather, contaminate the cargo of a third party,” explains Caraballo. The owner of the container does not know that it contains drugs. “They can remove the bolts, break the seal, put in the goods and close the doors with a cloned seal in minutes,” says Tayra Barsallo, former director of the National Customs Authority.

Local criminal groups that provide logistics support to Colombian cartels are still around, but their methodology has changed. “Before, they waited for the drugs on the coasts, then they began traveling to Colombia to bring them over themselves,” says Caraballo. “Later, they made various trips to Europe to bring money to Panama. During these trips, they made new contacts and established a permanent network on the continent that guarantees that cargo arrives at its destination,” he says.

Ábrego says that various gang members from Colón who are now serving time in the maximum-security prison located on the island of Punta Coco, “planned with customs and migration officials, national police, port security and administration and moved up in the world.”

Just 10% of the eight million containers that pass through Panama every year are inspected. Barsallo estimates that every port examines 10 to 12 containers every day. Customs officials identify suspicious containers through data analysis that is received by ports 48 hours before a ship’s arrival. This window allows authorities to analyze data and assess the need for intrusive or scanner inspection, but also gives traffickers the advantage of knowing the container’s route ahead of time. What’s more, the traffickers have evolved their tactics for hiding drugs.

Panamanian ports are key points in an immense network, a spiderweb that connects 160 countries. This vast map offers drug traffickers multiple business opportunities. Terminals are governed by strict international security protocols dictated by the International Maritime Organization and associated entities, but even so, many drugs reach their intended destinations.

The presence of criminal groups within ports has set off ferocious competition for the control of shipyards, the port zones that are dedicated to container storage and management. Between 2019 and 2023, Panamanian security forces seized more than 534 tons of drugs and carried out 249 anti-drug operations in ports, confiscating 110 tons were seized from various countries, including Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, the United States, Belgium and Peru, according to a 2023 report published by the Panamanian Ministry of Public Security.

In Colón province, between January and November of 2024 alone, authorities confiscated 32.7 tons of drugs, surpassing the previous year’s total by three tons.

The time it takes authorities to respond to port managers’ complaints about the presence of criminal groups allows the organizations to quickly reorganize. Such dynamics are indicative of the resilience that the groups enjoy within the ports.

Seizing drugs is not the job of port administrators. Ports seek to move the greatest number of containers in the shortest amount of time. As criminal organizations continue to adapt and expand their reach, institutions are struggling to keep pace with a criminal machine that recognizes no borders. Panama is not just a transit point, it is a key piece of a global network that moves billions of dollars and constantly challenges authorities. It forms part of an ongoing race in which, for the moment, criminal groups seem to have taken the lead.

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