Financial Services Advisor

Carlos Berguido, executive president of the Panama Banking Association: “Panama exited the previous version of the FATF list in record time, because of the strong commitment of the government, regulators and the financial services sector to promote the adoption of laws and regulation aimed at improving the country’s capacity to fight money laundering. However, during the last three years, a political stalemate between the executive and legislative branches of government made it very difficult to timely adopt certain key pieces of legislation, such as the criminalization of tax fraud and making tax crime a predicative of money laundering. The National Assembly passed this very important legislation in January, and it took effect in March, making it almost impossible to show evidence of enforcement in such a short time. However, supervision of the vast regulated nonfinancial sector came under scrutiny. The newly created intendency is tasked with anti-money laundering/anti-terrorist financing supervision and law enforcement of very diverse activities, from casinos to attorneys to accountants and used car dealers. This needs some time and resources to evolve and build the necessary institutional capacity in order to develop the risk-based approach to effectively supervise and enforce the law. During the last review…”