Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

On 14 April 2002, the OECD was pleased to announce that Panama has made a commitment to improve the transparency of its tax and regulatory systems and establish effective exchange of information for tax matters with OECD countries by 31 December 2005.


We know that this commitment was a charade and the jurisdiction was qualified “tax haven" early April 2009.



What a Panama Law firm is saying is worth analysing, as it is representative of the state of mind in most jurisdictions that are on the OECD grey list:


“Get your money out now! The ones who get out first, get out with the most on the best of all possible terms. Open offshore corporations, foundations, bank accounts and stock brokerage accounts now before it is too late and you will be prevented from doing so or penalized for doing so. The USA constitution, if they still use that up there, prevents retroactive laws. They should grandfather your offshore structures in and allow you to keep them. If they impose a tax on money going offshore in the near future you will escape this since your money would have been moved before any such tax is made into law. If they tax money coming back into the USA, just leave it outside. You can buy real estate offshore. You can open stock brokerage accounts offshore. You can open businesses offshore. Start to think globally like they do.”