Independent experts resign from Committee to assess Panama's finance system
Two international members on the Committee of Independent Experts to Assess Panama's International Service Platform, which the media has dubbed the Panama "Transparency Committee" have recently resigned. The American Criminologist with a Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz and The Swiss Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Basel, Mark Pieth, have both resigned on the basis that the committee lacked “transparency” and “independence”.
Why Panama’s Transparency Committee was created
The committee was formed by the Panamanian government to assess the financial landscape of Panama in the wake of the Mossack Fonseca scandal, which has come to be known at the Panama Papers. The committee brought together international experts with the task of critiquing the financial and tax systems in Panama following the scandal. In a decree writen by the Panamanian government the findings would focus on Panama, and once completed, the assessment would be turned over to the Panamanian government, who would then decide whether or not to go public with the report.
Why Stiglitz and Pieth have left Panama’s Transparency Committee
While the Panamanian government stated that the committee was managed independently, due to what they are calling “internal differences" the committee has lost two of it’s most accomplished members.
According to the news agency Reuters, a joint statement made by Stiglitz and Pieth said: ”It is clear that there are divergent views between the Government and that initially agreed upon by the Independent Committee regarding transparency and scope of the committee's work, these differences have led to irreconcilable differences between its members on how to proceed, in the content, scope and transparency of the work of the committee.”
The main disagreements are: the desire to make the report public and the desire to widen the scope of the research.
According to Costa Rican Roberto Artavia, the third international member of this committee, Stiglitz and Pieth’s desires (to make the report public and widen the scope of the research) are not in line with the original decree. In an article written by La Prensa Artavia states, “the terms of reference of the decree were something the two experts in question did not want to comply with entirely, and when the decree was not changed to meet their preference, they decided to resign."
In the same article, Alberto Aleman Zubieta another member of the committee said, “the two experts who resigned had a different vision than the rest of the committee. Furthermore, he stated that there was no lack of transparency or independence, but rather the work to be completed was defined in the decree. "The report must be delivered to the president and they wanted to go public immediately," he said, speaking to the seventh article of the decree: "unless the Government of Panama has authorized to do so, the Committee will not make public the results of its meetings and reports."
Panama’s Transparency Committee’s preliminary evaluation
According to the a preliminary document prepared by Panama’s Transparency Committee, the following suggestions were made:
- It was suggested that a law stipulating that firms in Panama and abroad agents must maintain financial reports of its entities, along with submitting annual reports to authorities on the final beneficiaries.
- It was proposed that a financial analysis unit, separate from the Presidency be created to take responsiblity of supervising offshore activities.
- It suggested that Panama take measures to exchange information through multilateral agreement and evaluate measures to minimize tax evasion by Panamanian law.
After submitting this report to Juan Carlos Varela the two international experts, Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Pieth resigned.
