Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes

31/10/2024 – The Global Forum Secretariat, along with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), delivered a 2-day, comprehensive workshop on the critical role of beneficial ownership transparency for fighting tax evasion and other forms of illicit financial flows on 29-30 October 2024.

Organised in Panama City, Panama, the workshop gathered over 40 tax and financial intelligence officials from 15 Latin American jurisdictions, including experts from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-style regional body for Latin America (GAFILAT) and from civil society (Tax Justice Network), to exchange on the importance of ensuring transparency of beneficial ownership information.

The participants discussed the recent updates made to the FATF Recommendations relating to beneficial ownership information, the latest trends from Global Forum and FATF peer reviews and their outcomes for Latin American countries. They exchanged on ways to implement a sound beneficial ownership framework, including through a multi-pronged approach, to ensure the availability and access to adequate, accurate and up-to-date beneficial ownership information. Finally, the participants carried out a self-assessment of their own beneficial ownership systems and reflected on possible actions that could be deployed in their countries to further improve them.

This regional workshop is part of a series aimed at supporting global efforts to strengthen the transparency of beneficial ownership information. It fits in the overall capacity-building strategy of the Global Forum Secretariat, which had released the new toolkit Building Effective Beneficial Ownership Frameworks with the Inter-American Development Bank earlier this year.

The Global Forum is the leading multilateral body mandated to ensure that jurisdictions around the world adhere to and effectively implement both the exchange of information on request standard and the standard of automatic exchange of information. These objectives are achieved through a robust monitoring and peer review process. The Global Forum also runs an extensive capacity-building programme to support its members in implementing the standards and help tax authorities make the best use of cross-border information sharing channels.

The Global Forum capacity-building programme is supported by the following development partners:

For more information, please contact gftaxcooperation@oecd.org.