LatinNews Daily - 31 October 2024

*Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino has rejected the decision by The Netherlands to maintain Panama on its blacklist of tax havens, announcing that Dutch companies would be excluded from participating in public tenders or “public acts”. The comments by President Mulino, who came to office earlier this year pledging to get Panama removed from what he calls “discriminatory financial lists”, come as he paid a visit to France last week meeting France’s President Emmanuel Macron who he lobbied to pledge support for Panama’s removal from the blacklist drawn up by the European Union (EU) of “jurisdictions which are deemed non-cooperative” in terms of compliance with international standards of tax transparency and fair taxation. While a year ago the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which monitors national regulations to combat money laundering and the funding of terrorism, removed Panama from its ‘grey’ list, welcoming strengthened controls, on 8 October this year the EU opted to leave Panama on its list of non-compliant countries regarding the treatment of tax havens.