Panama City:
Panama fears the publication Sunday of a new expose about monetary secrecy in worldwide tax havens could once more taint its reputation, which was seriously broken by the “Panama Papers” scandal, according to a government letter released by regional media.
“The damage could be insurmountable,” the Panamanian government mentioned in the letter, sent by means of a law firm to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The letter warns that “any publication” reinforcing “a false perception” of the nation as a attainable tax haven “will have devastating consequences for Panama and its people.”
The ICIJ tweeted that it would release Sunday 1630 GMT its “most expansive expose of financial secrecy yet,” based on the leak of 11.9 million documents “covering every corner of the globe.”
The “Pandora Papers” investigation is the outcome of work by more than 600 reporters in 117 nations, the ICIJ mentioned.
The letter from the Panamanian government also references some of the reforms that the Central American nation has made in current years, though it remains on the EU list of tax havens.
It also indicates that considering the fact that 2016 the registration of more than 395,000 corporations and foundations has been suspended, about half of these current at that time.
The government fears that Panama will once more be the epicenter of a new worldwide tax havens scandal like the one that followed the ICIJ’s disclosure of the “Panama Papers” in 2016.
That enormous information leak exposed widespread tax avoidance and evasion employing complicated structures of offshore shell corporations and triggered an international outcry.
The leak, linked to the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, broken Panama’s international image, in spite of the truth that most of the corporations involved had been overseas.
The investigation revealed the concealment of properties, corporations, assets, income and tax evasion by heads of state and government, political leaders and personalities from finance, sports and the arts.
Since then, Panama has carried out different legal reforms to strengthen banking controls and penalize tax evasion with jail time.
The Panama of 2016 “is nothing like the Panama of today,” the government mentioned in its letter.
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