Panama leaves the high-risk list for money laundering

The European Union (EU) removed Panama from the list of “high-risk countries due to strategic deficiencies in the prevention of money laundering”. and the financing of terrorism,” the Panamanian government announced this Thursday, celebrating the aforementioned departure from the country.

“The Commission of the European Union announced the amendment of the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1675, which eliminates Panama from the list of high-risk countries, considering the progress presented in the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing,” said the President of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, in X.

In a press release, the government indicated that “the announcement made by the European Commission today, Thursday, amending the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1675 with an annex, will enter into force twenty days after its publication in the Official Gazette”. European Union”.

This allows “the country to take an important step towards international transparency,” the official letter added.

The Cortiz government explained that the country’s removal from the list comes “following a process that began in October 2020, in which important measures were implemented to combat these scourges.”

Therefore, after “examining the progress presented by the country in terms of preventing money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, in order to correct strategic deficiencies in this matter, the Commission welcomed the important advances presented by the technical team of “Panama” in improving its regime to combat against money laundering and terrorist financing.”

Among them, “it was observed that the country has not only strengthened the legal and regulatory framework to meet the obligations of the action plan on strategic deficiencies identified by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), but implemented important mechanisms that demonstrated the effectiveness of the adopted measures,” the official information states.

Last October, the FATF also removed Panama from its “gray list” for the second time, considering that it had made progress in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, which the government assessed as positive for its economy.

In 2020 The EU has again included Panama on its blacklist of tax havens, from which it left in January 2018. since it does not comply with the standards of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Tax Information of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In December 2017, Panama entered the first blacklist, resulting from scandals such as the Panama Papers, the 2016 leak of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca involving people from around the world that raised suspicions of tax evasion, concealment wealth and money laundering.