The Central American country of Panama, which last month was among 17 countries blacklisted by the EU finance ministers for failing to co-operate with the European Union’s efforts to crack down on tax havens, signed up to the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information) Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement.
Signing the necessary papers on behalf of his country at the OECD’s Paris headquarters, reads the OECD statement, was Panama’s director-general of revenue and the delegated competent authority of Panama, Publio Ricardo Cortés. Panama thus becomes the 98th jurisdiction to join the Standard, which, the OECD noted, is the main international agreement for implementing the automatic exchange of financial account information.
The other seven countries expected to be removed imminently from the EU blacklist are South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Grenada, Macao, Mongolia and Tunisia. The removal of almost half the names from the blacklist may be seen by some EU critics «as a blow to its campaign against tax avoidance».
