Regardless of who is right about the motives, the resignations from an international committee set up to review practices in Panama's financial industry, and the ensuing squabbling, has only aggravated the bad perception of these practices.
EDITORIAL
The presence of the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the notorious Swiss criminologist Mark Pieth along with Panamanian and regional personalities, in a commission to review the practices of the local financial industry, had the obvious good intention of communicating to the world Panama's also good intentions of reversing the country's image as a tax haven.
The maximum amount allowed for banking transactions in cash in foreign and national currency has been lowered from $10,000 to $4,000.
From a resolution by the Central Bank of Honduras:
For purposes of the application of Articles 8, 12, 23 and 25 and in compliance with the provisions of Article 86 of the Special Law against Money Laundering the following amounts have been established:
According to the nicaraguan regulator, the increasing amount of regulation and anti-money laundering controls that the US banks are subject to, has led some of them to remove their correspondent agencies from the country.
The president of the Association of Private Banks in Nicaragua (Asobanp), Juan Carlos Arguello, said in an article on Laprensa.com.ni that "...
The Superintendent of the Financial System has started monitoring the operations of companies that send and receive remittances.
With the law reform passed by the Assembly, legal persons performing operations to systematically send or receive money or substantial amounts, by any means, at national and international level, will be supervised by the Superintendency of the Financial System.