Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes referred to recent reports showing that the G-7 countries are among those with the greatest financial secrecy and questioned that even so, Panama is on the gray list.
The Republican Foreign Minister, Erika Mouynes, said that Panama had problems going forward on financial transparency and that she was developing an action plan with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), but stated that “they can’t catch us as scapegoats where they are.” puts us in all the headlines, when we’re not really the problem.”
The day before, at the same forum, but in an interview with Bloomberg, Mouynes referred to a recent report showing that the G-7 countries are among the countries with the greatest financial secrecy and questioned whether Panama was on the gray list. .
The Chancellor said Financial Confidentiality Index, published by the non-governmental organization Tax Justice Network. The report notes that the United States ranks first among the countries that “most favor people hiding their wealth from the rule of law and has received the worst score on record to date since the rankings began in 2009.
The Tax Justice Network further notes that the provision of financial confidentiality services is declining worldwide due to transparency reforms.” but that “only five G7 countries – the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany and Italy – are responsible for reducing progress against financial secrecy worldwide by more than half”.
The minister questioned that none of these countries are on the gray list drawn up by international organizations. Panama ranks 18th in the Tax Justice Network classification. The closer to first place in a country’s ranking, the more jurisdictions are deemed to be contributing to financial secrecy.
Each country’s position in the ranking is calculated by combining its opacity score and jurisdictional weights at the global level.
In the case of Panama, the opacity is high according to the study (73/100), but the jurisdiction is not widely used. For example, the report makes a comparison between Panama and the UK. “Panama is more opaque than the UK, but the UK is much more used as an overseas wealth destination, making the UK a greater provider of financial secrecy in practice.”
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