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Weekly Report - 14 December 2017 (WR-17-49)
PANAMA: Setback for Varela as EU blacklists Panama
The government led by President Juan Carlos Varela has encountered a major setback in its efforts to restore credibility to Panama’s image, which was badly tarnished by the April 2016 ‘Panama Papers’ scandal (when over 11m confidential documents were leaked from the offices of Panama-based offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca). Last week the European Union (EU) announced that it was blacklisting Panama for “having a harmful preferential tax regime” and failing to “clearly commit to amending or abolishing it as requested by 31 December 2018”. The EU’s move comes amid other transparency related concerns for Varela after Panama’s main opposition Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) called for him to be probed over irregular donations received by his Partido Panameñista (PPA) from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.
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