Panama, trying to get off international grey lists, passes new tax transparency law

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Panama’s president, Laurentino Cortizo, sanctioned a law on international tax transparency and prevention of money laundering, which includes “elements” to prevent the country from being included in international “grey” lists, informed the government.

The law seeks to “adjust the legal norms to the international standards that improve the country’s qualification in matters of international tax transparency before the Global Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)”, explained the Presidency.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Panama

And “elements” of the Action Plan of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are added to “prevent Panama from being included in discriminatory lists”.

This law, which also includes matters related to the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, contains eight articles and modifies five laws to “create conditions to “carry out transparent international transactions in the world and to be able to attract foreign investment.”

The norm, signed by Cortizo and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Héctor Alexander -proponent of this initiative before the National Assembly (Parliament)-, also repeals a law “which regulates the measures to know the client for the resident agents of existing legal entities in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Panama.”

The Central American country remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) lists and the European Union (EU) for deficiencies in the fight against money laundering.

Although Panama has been working for years to improve its fiscal transparency framework, this has not prevented it from remaining on these discriminatory lists, such as that of the European Union (EU) of countries that do not cooperate in fiscal matters.

This year, the Government submitted three bills to Parliament to strengthen the fight against money laundering and has reiterated its “commitment” to the EU to improve transparency.

With the latest journalistic investigation of the Pandora Papers, the Panamanian Government tried to curb the possible negative consequences on the country’s reputation, already damaged by the Panama Papers, a pioneering investigation by the ICIJ, which leaked, in April 2016, 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, through which personalities from around the world hired the services of that firm, now extinct, to create offshore companies allegedly to evade taxes.