PANAMA

On February 7 the Superintendency of Non-Financial Entities published an agreement that regulates the administrative sanctioning process of the entity. This will be applied to those non-financial regulated entities, such as companies operating in the Colon Free Zone or other free zones of Panama, that fail to comply with the regulations that establish the money laundering prevention regime, established in Law 23 of 2015. The regulation is already in force.

According to the agreement, the ordinary administrative sanctioning process will be initiated upon the existence of findings or conclusive reasons that confirm some type of infraction to the preventive regime. According to the provisions of Law 23, this could occur in the event of non-compliance with the obligation to report transactions or to report suspicious transactions (STRs), for example. In this case, the parties involved will have a term of 10 working days, as from the resolution initiating the procedure, to submit evidence to guarantee their defense, which must be corroborated by the Superintendency.

In case of non-compliance with the prevention regime, the regulation establishes a scale of sanctions ranging from reprimands, that is, disciplinary sanctions with a warning, fines with monetary penalties up to the suspension of corporate rights of legal entities. This last case may occur for failure to register the data of legal entities with the Single System of Beneficial Owners.

In the case of violations to Law 23, fines range from USD 500,000 for minor penalties, up to USD 5,000,000 for acts of maximum gravity. Thus, compliance with the payment of penalties has a term of up to 90 working days, counted from the notification that sets the sanction.