The Committee of Independent Experts from which Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Pieth resigned early on, has presented its findings and recommendations for Panama to achieve financial transparency as requested by the international community.
The Committee of Independent Experts was appointed by the Varela administration in April this year, after the commotioncaused by the revelation of the so- called Panama Papers, which reported the existence of a complex system of offshore companies focused around the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, apparently used to conceal assets belonging to public figures.The Panama Papers scandal was the culmination of a process that has taken several years, in which Panama has been systematically attacked by the international financial community, led by the OECD, pointing to the opacity of its financial system, which lends itself to tax evasion activities to the detriment of other countries and possibly also money laundering.
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.
He recommended that the Government continue, in the short-term, to provide subsidies to the needy to help ease the effects of the world food crisis and the high price of oil.
"Not all countries can celebrate an increase in growth like you have. It's worth the while to continue working for better policies in future, starting with education and those sectors of the country that are humbler and more vulnerable, and to which a greater part of the resources should be directed," he highlighted, according to a press release from the Ministry of the Economy (MEF).