Ignacio Yacobucci, president of UIF, Florencia Misrahi, head of AFIP and Esteban Fullin, Executive Secretary of GAFILAT were in charge of opening the event that brings together officials and representatives from national, provincial and international organizations for two days.
More than 40 attendees, including representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Anti-Corruption Office, the National Insurance Superintendency, the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, the National Coordination program to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism, the General Inspection of Justice (IGJ), the provincial directorates of Legal Entities of Buenos Aires and Mendoza, the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Paraguay, the Internal Revenue Service of Ecuador, the Special Secretariat of the Federal Revenue of Brazil and the Internal Audit of the Nation of Uruguay, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), were present.
At the beginning of the meeting, Esteban Fullin, Executive Secretary of GAFILAT, highlighted the relevance of the recent reforms implemented by Argentina and expressed that: “Having precise knowledge of companies is key when it comes to preventing money laundering and so is the role of tax agencies in terms of being able to track and participate in the recovery of assets.”
The head of the AFIP, Florencia Misrahi, highlighted the attendance of authorities and members of all the competent organizations, and after reviewing the update of international standards, she indicated: “The central objective of the transparency of final beneficiaries is to guarantee that the authorities are able to access information on who are the subjects who ultimately own, control or benefit from certain people or criminal structures,” and added that “at the domestic level, the effectiveness and justice of a tax system depends, among other issues, on whether the State can know who owns what and where. If the final beneficiaries of people and other legal structures are not recognized, a situation that is functional to tax evasion and capital flight is generated.”
For his part, the president of the UIF, Ignacio Yacobucci, highlighted that, currently, the world is debating how tax agencies and financial intelligence agencies should converge in terms of information exchange. “In our country, in terms of provincial autonomy and trade registries, the challenge is great because we have to rethink the flow of information so that it is not affected by this diversity,” he expressed. In that sense, he defined technological tools as allies and recognized that “to have a more intelligent system of control and prevention of money laundering, we must include in the debate the adoption of new mechanisms to horizontally share information.”
At the workshop, proposals will be exchanged to improve the Argentine legal regime to comply with international obligations and for the regulation of the new public registry of final beneficiaries established by Law 27,739, which will operate within the scope of the AFIP.
The objective of the call is to train public officials on the importance of ensuring that there is adequate, accurate and timely information on the final beneficiary and the control of legal entities, to which the competent authorities can have access, in compliance with Recommendations 24 and 25 from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
