To get off FATF’s gray list, you need to complete 15 points

Panama he hopes to get off the list Financial Action Task Force (FATF) during this year, fulfilling 15 points of the agency’s action plan, said the Agency’s technical secretary National Anti-Money Laundering Commission of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), Isabel Vecchio.

“Partially fulfilled, there are 2 points concerning the identification of end users and the access of the competent authorities to this data, and we are working on this together with the Head Office Non-financial entities finish,” said the MEF official.

He will soon hold a meeting, and then a plenary meeting with FATF where the results of the meeting that will be held in the month of May will be known.

Vecchio said that every three months the country has meetings with FATFfirst with the evaluators and then with the whole group where progress is shown and information is obtained from them.

He indicated that in the framework of the evaluation and monitoring of the evaluation, the state must comply with 15 points that are currently included in the plan and that is being worked on and no new incidents are expected because it is a plan that has already been established. which happened from 2019 when Panama it is included in the list and on which they continue to work.

The expectation is to leave the list this year and strengthen the system prevention of money laundering continue from these lists.

Register of Resident Agents
They currently operate a large registry of agents residing in Atlapa Congress Centerwhose purpose is to include the largest number of resident agents, i.e. lawyers who are legal entities in the Public Registry, in order to enter the platform and upload end-user data as prescribed by Law 129 of 2020, held Dayra Carrizo Castillerosupervisor of non-financial subjects.

“Registration was until March 31, but we plan to extend it until April so that we can provide the service resident agents and track them in this register and achieve a higher amount, “said the official.

Currently, more than 2,500 resident agents are registered on the platform, which is quite a positive figure, and today 50% load has been reached in the end user registry with more than 100,000. legal persons loaded into it.

There are two types of records in the Supervision of non-financial entities: one is online registration which is for all non-financial payers within which resident agents enter, and failure to register on this platform generates a fine of at least $5,000. The second register is the Single register of end users, which is specifically intended for resident agents, those lawyers who are legal entities in Panama Public Registry.

Failure to register on the platform End users it also generates a minimum fine of $5,000 and also generates a suspension of legal entities to which the resident agent provides service and a fine of $1,000 for each legal entity.

He assured that during the evaluations, the implementation of “our mechanisms to ensure that resident agents have information about end users, that the said information is verifiable and that the competent authorities have access to it, was demonstrated, and this was done through supervision that the same evaluation group considers fulfilled and also with implementation Register of end users“.

What needs to be shown now is the sustainability of the process, and over time “we show that it is irreversible process which we will show in the month of May in the next evaluation”, concluded Carrizo.