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The Panama Private Interest Foundation (Fundación de Interés Privado) is one of the most sophisticated wealth-preservation instruments available anywhere in the world. It is a sui generis vehicle — a structure that sits between a company and a trust — combining the strategic advantages of the Anglo-Saxon trust with the separate legal personality of a corporation. For family offices, tax-planning professionals, advisers and banks seeking genuinely safe asset planning for their clients, the Panama Foundation is frequently the answer.
A Foundation is created by a Founder and governed by a Foundation Council (the equivalent of a board), in accordance with a public Foundation Charter and a set of private, confidential Regulations (By-laws) that name the beneficiaries and set out how the assets are to be managed and distributed. Critically, a Foundation has no owners and no shares. Once assets are transferred into it, they cease to belong to the Founder and become an independent patrimony belonging to the Foundation itself.
This separation is the source of the Foundation's power. Because the assets are no longer the personal property of the Founder or the beneficiaries, they are, under Panamanian law, strongly protected against seizure, attachment and foreign judgments arising from divorce, forced-heirship claims, or commercial litigation — provided the structure is properly established and not used to defraud existing creditors.
Gerli & Co. drafts each Foundation Charter and its confidential Regulations precisely around the client's estate-planning and generational-transfer goals — these are not filled-in templates. We provide the Foundation Council, registered agent and ongoing administration, integrate the Foundation with underlying companies and bank accounts where appropriate, and keep the structure compliant with Panama's beneficial-ownership and record-keeping requirements. The result is a legacy structure built to remain untouched by external liabilities and to do exactly what the Founder intended, for generations.
Where a Foundation sits within a multinational group and receives foreign-source passive income, Panama's Economic Substance regime (Law 526 of 2026) may apply. Gerli & Co. manages both the structure and its ongoing ESR compliance — see our Economic Substance & Compliance services.