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Panama updated the guidelines and guidelines for professionals who carry out activities subject to supervision, in order to raise the level of compliance with a risk-based approach, strengthen the money laundering prevention system, in order to favor the competitiveness of the country.

This was established in agreement No. JD-02-2022, which replaces agreement No. JD-01 of June 25, 2020 as part of the risk mitigation strategy. “The agreement stems from current regulations and a risk analysis of the corporate sector that was carried out in 2021,” explained the Superintendent of Non-Financial Subjects (SSNF), Dayra Carrizo Castillero.

The document details and specifies the obligations in terms of prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism for lawyers and accountants, in order to provide guidance and legal certainty to these two professions.

The agreement is part of the mitigation strategy so that both lawyers and accountants can assess the risk of their activities and the activities of their clients, carry out basic or extended due diligence.

Specifically, the agreement provides guidance regarding the obligations in the thematic axes of: risk assessment, risk mitigation, knowledge of the nature of the business, determination of the financial and transactional profile.

“At the end of the day, what is sought with this agreement is to be able to reinforce all the due diligence measures, to give a risk-based approach. It is as if one were going to build a house… This agreement is trying to shield the services that both lawyers and accountants provide, in order to have greater transparency and eventually greater competitiveness,” Carrizo said.

The agreement is closely aligned with compliance with the international standards required by international organizations such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) so that Panama can get out of its gray lists of tax havens.

Although for Carrizo, affirming that the agreement is part of the Gafi’s requirements so that the country can be removed from the gray list “is a decision of the government itself. As I mentioned before, it responds to current regulations, that is, Law 23, Law 254, which empowers us to issue this type of regulation. This agreement replaces one that was already issued in 2020, it is an update of the standard in response to our risk assessment from last year.”

Since June 2019, the Gafi has kept Panama on its list of non-cooperative countries and high-risk jurisdictions, known as the gray list, considering that it still has strategic deficiencies in the regimes to counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism. , although he acknowledges his progress.

Regarding the updated agreement on risk, the president of the National Bar Association (CNA), Juan Carlos Araúz, said that “we must understand the moment that the country is experiencing and going through in terms of discriminatory lists.”

He stressed that the legal sector requires training, awareness and also very efficient communication with government authorities, understanding that the legal profession has made its sacrifice.

“Over time, it is the sector that has been most tormented by regulations and this reality obviously makes us ask for sensitivity in the College for the implementation of this document,” said Araúz.

He announced that next Monday at 2:00 in the afternoon the first training of lawyers will take place, at the National Bar Association, by authorities. “It will be the first exchange so that the legal profession can externalize different approaches, the times in which it is intended to be implemented, but above all that the resource of training can be constantly transmitted to the authorities.”

Araúz pointed out that the aspiration is that each lawyer becomes his own compliance officer, from the full understanding of responsibility, and that this is not understood as a prohibition on the provision of a legal service.

“It must be understood that the resident agent service entails an activity of all lawyers, therefore to the extent that these new requirements are placed in a context of possibility and, above all, of total understanding, I would believe that the legal profession will continue contributing with transparency and above all with the responsibility of presenting to the country and to the world the competitiveness of a sector that is called to be an engine of development for the country”, he expressed.

However, according to Araúz, the lawyers’ main complaint is time. “Now from all these regulations it implies that a lawyer who provides the service of resident agent must invest in documenting and supporting all these folders, which must be visible. It is a reality that in the previous regulations there was no meticulousness to have that documentation that had to be registered, therefore I would say that today for lawyers the first reaction is the time to invest to be able to complete the requirements; and the second thing would be to understand what those requirements are in order to be able to document efficiently, what the authorities seek to provide at the time an incident occurs, ”he pointed out.