Scandal committee report faces implementation challenge

MARK PIETH, the Swiss criminology professor who resigned from the Panama committee  convened in the wake of the Mossack Fonseca scandal   to propose reforms to Panama’s financial system   says the committee’s report, delivered last month, contains some good recommendations

But : The challenge now is to implement them, that is the hardest part,”he said during the 17th International Conference Against Corruption, which is taking place in Panama.

“I still think that assembling such a committee was a good idea, although I would have wanted it to be more international.”

That objection was one of the reasons that motivated his departure from the committee along with Nobel economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

They were also concerned that the report would not be made public, something that President Juan Carlos Varela did a short time after receiving it.

After their resignations, Pieth and Stiglitz wrote their own  report with  global  recommendations to combat the use of corporate structures and the financial system to hide assets.

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In that report, they recommended the creation of public records that can be accessed by investigators.