Stockmarket Regulator Scrutinizing Mossack Fonseca investment advisory business

The investment advisory business of disgraced law firm Mossack Fonseca “is being thoroughly investigated” as a result of the Panama Papers scandal, according to Marelissa Quintero, head of the Panamanian regulatory authority responsible for financial markets oversigh.

Ms. Quintero made her declarations at the end of a meeting during which she officially presented the Authority’s 2015 Report. “Last Monday, we launched a deeper investigation due to the situation at hand”, she stated, saying that she expected the process to go on for about a month. She went on to explain that “the objective of the investigation is to ensure that all applicable due-diligence and know- your-client rules were followed, including the identification of the final beneficiaries of the funds they [Mossack Fonseca] handled”. “Although the findings of the investgations are confidential and as such will not be released to the public, the results will be shared with the firm itself so that it make take remedial measures where processes were found to be deficient”, Ms. Quintero pointed out.

That being said, should evidence of criminal wrong-doing emerge as part of the investigation, “that information will be immediately passed on to the relevant authorities”, she warned. Ms Quintero went on to recognize that the scandal brought about by the leaked Mossack Fonseca documents “has definitely affected the reputation of Panama as a financial centre”. “We are analyzing the impact that the possible accession of Panama to the OECD mechasism of automatic exchange of information may have on the local marketplace”, she informed, adding that she expected this to be marginal, since most of the funds parked in Panama are of Latin American, and not European, provenance.