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Seven officials were separated for not complying with the law of tax havens
Posted On 20 Jul 2018
Ecuadornews:
The Comptroller’s Office, in compliance with the popular consultation of 2017, carries out examinations to 53 public servants with assets in offshore territories that have not regularized their situation.
Public officials who owned assets or capital in countries considered as tax havens had until March 6 to present a statement to the Comptroller General, in which they report that they stopped owning those resources.
After the deadline, the control body detected 485 asset declarations with assets or capitals in tax havens, which were presented by servers that were in place before September 8, 2017, for which the Comptroller informed them about the obligation to regularize your situation.
Of that figure provided by the control entity, 214 public servants declared that they had no such assets. Another 121 cases ended their management or resigned; 97 were errors of fingering the country by the declarants themselves and corrected the mistake.
However, 53 officials did not regularize their situation, so the agency in charge follows up to take legal action. In addition, 11 cases of servers were detected that took possession after the validity of the Organic Law for the Application of the Popular Consultation carried out on February 19, 2017, for which reason the Comptroller’s Office initiated the special examinations.
As a result of this process, the dismissal of seven servers was ruled and the file of four cases was resolved because the infraction was not evidenced. The fight against tax evasion and tax havens was one of the premises of the previous government that put the issue on the table, both at the international level and at the local level.
At that time, Ecuador proposed the creation of an intergovernmental body to fight against tax havens. Internally, a popular consultation was held in February 2017, in which the Ecuadorian people approved the establishment of an impediment to public officials to have assets or capital in tax havens, which led to a law for the application of the referendum giving a deadline to the servers to regulate their situation, which expired in March.
Assemblyman Pabel Muñoz, president of the Economic Development Commission, questioned that in the current government there is a relaxation in the public agenda the issue of tax havens. He pointed out that the discussion does not focus on denying the freedom of entrepreneurs to place their resources where they want, but rather that the wealth generated in the country must comply with their tax obligations.
In this regard, he questioned that the Law of Productive Development implies a relaxation of the policy in relation to tax havens. “The law says that if a company makes an investment contract on priority sectors, it is guaranteed so that 100% of its profits leave the country without paying Income Tax or Foreign Exchange Tax.
The message is that it does not matter that the wealth generated in the country eventually leaves the territory without fulfilling its tax obligations, “said Muñoz.
Assemblywoman Lourdes Cuesta, of the CREO movement, questioned that the law on tax havens was not intended for the benefit of the community, but to politically disable Guilermo Lasso, ex-candidate for the presidency, and thus prevent it from reaching Carondelet.
Evasion
Fiscal opacity
The Internal Revenue Service (SRI acronym in Spanish) considers 88 jurisdictions tax havens, mainly because there is no transparency and opacity in the information on fiscal, financial and corporate events.
53 public officials with assets in tax havens have not yet regularized their situation.
Panama attracts resources
Panama is the tax haven with the greatest presence of Ecuadorian resources (60%), followed by Barbados (12%). (I)
