PANAMA CITY (AP) — Panama's president moved to assure the public on Friday that critical ports at both ends of the Panama Canal will continue to operate without interruption — a day after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the concession held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings was unconstitutional.
The court's decision late Thursday advances a U.S. aim to block any influence by China over the strategic waterway and immediately drew a sharp rebuke from Beijing.
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Cranes load a cargo ship at Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Cranes load a cargo ship at Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
FILE -Cranes load a cargo ship at the Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE - Ship containers are stacked at the Panama Canal Balboa port, operated by the Panama Ports Company, in Panama City, Sept. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE -A cargo ship sails past the Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE - Workers carry out maintenance at the Pedro Miguel locks of the Panama Canal during routine upkeep in Panama City, Friday, May 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said that until the court's ruling is executed — a period of time he did not specify — Panama's Maritime Authority would work with Panama Ports Company, the CK Hutchison subsidiary, to ensure continuing operations at the port.
Once the concession is formally ended, a local subsidiary of Danish logistics company A.P. Moller-Maersk will operate the ports in a transitional phase until a new concession can be bid and awarded, Mulino said.
“Panama moves forward, its ports will continue operating without interruption and we will continue serving the world at the logistics center of excellence that we are,” Mulino said in a recorded video address.
The court’s ruling followed an audit by Panama’s comptroller, which alleged irregularities in the 25-year extension of the concession, granted in 2021.
The Trump administration made blocking China’s influence over the Panama Canal one of its priorities in the hemisphere. Panama was U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first overseas stop as the United States’ top diplomat. On Friday, Rubio said on X that “the United States is encouraged by the recent Panamanian Supreme Court’s decision to rule port concessions to China unconstitutional.”
Despite the insistence by Panama’s government and the canal authority that China has no influence over its operations, Rubio made clear that the U.S. viewed the operation of the ports as a national security issue. U.S. President Donald Trump had gone so far as to say Panama should return the canal to U.S. control.
The court’s brief statement gave no guidance on what would happen to the ports now.
CK Hutchison’s subsidiary, Panama Ports Company, said it has not been notified yet about the decision but insisted its concession was the result of transparent international bidding.
It said in its statement that the ruling “lacks legal basis and jeopardizes not only PPC and its contract, but also the well-being and stability of thousands of Panamanian families who depend directly and indirectly on port activity, but also the rule of law and legal certainty in the country.”
It said that it reserves all rights to proceed legally in Panama or elsewhere, but gave no more details.
The Hong Kong government firmly rejected the ruling in a statement, saying it strongly opposes any foreign government using coercive, repressive or other unreasonable means to seriously harm the business interests of Hong Kong enterprises. It said the Panamanian government should respect the spirit of contracts and provide a fair business environment.
“Given the current situation in Panama, Hong Kong enterprises should carefully review their existing and future investments there," it said.
In Beijing, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, told reporters that China would take all necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of “the Chinese company,” without elaborating on the potential steps.
Political analyst Edwin Cabrera said once the parties are notified, the issue of what to do with the ports goes to Panama’s executive branch, specifically the Panama Maritime Authority.
“I have the impression from conversations that I have had with some people that the operation (of the ports) will not stop,” Cabrera said.
CK Hutchison Holdings announced a deal last year to sell its majority stake in the Panamanian ports and others around the world to an international consortium that included BlackRock Inc. But the deal appeared to stall over objections by the Chinese government.
The company said last July that it was considering seeking a Chinese investor to join as a significant member of the consortium, a move that some interpreted as way to please Beijing, but CK Hutchison hasn't said more since.
The awkward position the company found itself in highlights the challenges Hong Kong business elites face in navigating Beijing’s expectations of national loyalty, especially when relations between China and the United States are strained. CK Hutchison is owned by the family of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing.
Last year, Panama’s comptroller audited the concession to the Panama Ports Company, which had held the contract to operate the ports since 1997. The concession was renewed in 2021 for 25 years, during the prior Panamanian administration.
Comptroller Anel Flores said the audit found payments that were not made, accounting errors and the apparent existence of “ghost” concessions operating within the ports since 2015. The company denied those allegations.
The audit determined that the irregularities had cost the government about $300 million since the concession was extended and an estimated $1.2 billion during the original 25-year contract.
Flores also said the extension was granted without the required endorsement of his office.
On July 30, the comptroller challenged the Panama Ports Company’s contract to operate the ports before the Supreme Court.
Associated Press writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
Cranes load a cargo ship at Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Cranes load a cargo ship at Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
FILE -Cranes load a cargo ship at the Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE - Ship containers are stacked at the Panama Canal Balboa port, operated by the Panama Ports Company, in Panama City, Sept. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE -A cargo ship sails past the Panama Canal's Port of Balboa, managed by CK Hutchison Holdings, in Panama City, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
FILE - Workers carry out maintenance at the Pedro Miguel locks of the Panama Canal during routine upkeep in Panama City, Friday, May 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.
The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.
As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.
Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.
“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."
To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.
“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”
Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.
The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.
“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”
For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.
Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.
During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.
Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.
“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”
A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.
Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.
A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.
“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.
Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.
Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”
Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.
Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.
“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.
When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.
In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.
Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.
Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."
In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.
State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.
Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.
“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”
He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.
Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.
Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."
The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.
“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”
FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
