*Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo has hailed the decision by the European Union (EU) to remove Panama from its ‘grey’ list of countries that have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) frameworks. This followed a similar decision by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in October 2023. Panama had been reinstated on the FATF grey list after “strategic deficiencies” were identified in June 2019 – the month before President Cortizo took office. In a statement announcing the European Union’s decision President Cortizo highlighted as examples of actions taken to remove Panama from the grey list, changes to rules aimed at preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, and the adoption of a single registry of beneficial owners (RUBF in the Spanish acronym), among other things.
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