Panama moving on transparency, laundering
ABOUT 80 percent of the companies that were included in the Panama Papers list were not Panamanian corporations. “There are societies in 21 jurisdictions, and most of the middlemen who sold those societies were not Panamanians,” said Finance Minister Dulcidio De La Guardia.
He slipped the information in during the XIV international seminar of the International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators in Panama on Friday, May 20, while announcing that Panama has agreed to tax treaties with 30 countries, six of which are pending ratification, and has started negotiating three more, said Minister of Economy and Finance Dulcidio De La Guardia.
“In a very short time we have come a long way on transparency and are strengthening the institutions responsible for supervising the subjects required in the field of money laundering, financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” said the minister.
The six pending agreements are with Austria, Belgium, Germany, Bahrain, Vietnam and Colombia. Agreements with Japan, India and Australia are in negotiation.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recognized the efforts of Panama to implement the bilateral model of automatic exchange of financial information from the year 2018, but wants those commitments reached through multilateral agreements rather than ones that are bilateral.
