Panama was signed on Thursday in Paris an international agreement for the exchange of tax information, a step forward towards transparency, a few months after the scandal from the papers of Panama, which became the central american country in the spotlight.
it Is a confirmation of its "commitment to take the necessary measures to respond to international expectations," he said after signing Angel Gurria, the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with headquarters in Paris, and that sets the international standards of fiscal transparency.
"This today is a decisive step," he said to the AFP the ambassador of panama in France, a Pillar of German, and said that "that country that describes the 'Panama Papers' is a country that does not exist, it is the country of John Le Carré".
The so-called Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAC, for its acronym in English), now signed by 105 countries, is the main international instrument of cooperation in the fight against the obfuscation, the evasion of capital and tax havens.
"Panama has sent a very strong signal, and more than a signal, because it is legally binding to exchange information with all over the world," he told the AFP Pascal Saint-Amans, the director of the centre for Tax policy and administration OECD.
Measurements
The signature in Paris of this text coincides with the recent efforts of the country led by Juan Carlos Varela to approve transparency measures, including making public the fines for non-compliance of the law on money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
in Addition to the panamanian public administration will now have better access to information on beneficial owners of bank accounts, noted by the OECD.
The agreement is limited by the time of the exchange of information upon request of a country to another but the organization expected to be launched in the next two years, a mechanism of automatic exchange, more quick and that you do not need prior justification.
"Today there are more than 500,000 people around the world that have revealed their bank accounts 'offshore' by the prospect of automatic exchange of information", welcomes Saint-Amans.
Change image
Panama is seeking to change its image from that in the past month of April, a journalistic research international brought to light 11.5 million documents from the law firm panama Mossack Fonseca that uncovered the money hidden from political leaders, athletes or celebrities through companies 'offshore'.
The case put Panama in the international spotlight, especially with criticism of the OECD and France, which decided to re-include the country in its list of tax havens.
But the country refuses to consider it in that category, and in September the congress passed, including a law to take retaliatory action to those that accuse Panama of being a tax haven or that may impair commercially.
The government argues that, unlike a tax haven, whose economy rests on the financial system, in Panama, less than 1% of the GDP comes from the sector of the companies 'offshore' and in exchange get 25% of their wealth to the canal, transportation and logistics.
"Our wager is to continue to be each day more a logistics center for the Americas, a center port, a center of connectivity," said the ambassador.
in mid-October, the panamanian government announced the end of the work of the commission of experts established following the scandal to improve the fight against tax evasion. Their findings could be released in the next days.
The formation of the commission was marked by controversy after the Nobel in Economics Joseph Stiglitz and the swiss expert anti-corruption Mark Pieth decided to leave citing lack of transparency. (I)
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