Panama hopes to exit Financial Task Force gray list next month

The Vice Minister of Finance, Jorge Luis Almengor, reported that a new plenary session with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is scheduled for  September, where significant progress and evidence will be presented so that Panama can get out of the discriminatory list, in the which has been since 2019.

According to Almengor, the country has already fulfilled 11 of the 15 points of the FATF action plan and by 2022 the recognition of the fulfillment of four of those actions has been obtained.

These actions consist of the establishment of an ecosystem that is integrating all public institutions related to issues of prevention and combating the financing of terrorism and crimes related to money laundering.

However, for Almengor, the support of the justice system is lacking, which is key to achieving the effective objectives of the regulations.

The Government insists that Panama has continuously presented significant and tangible progress that

include legislative changes, exhaustive development of risk analysis, implementation of regulations, development of a registry of the final beneficiary, and the increase in focused investigations in predicate offenses abroad, among other aspects.