This in from Fox News Latino.

A recently created supervisory body in Panama will seek to better monitor business sectors generally used by money launderers when they are unable to exploit the financial system, the head of that entity said.

The mission of the Intendance for the Supervision and Regulation of Non-Financial Entities is not to serve as a “policing regime, but rather as a means to help our business leaders shield a sector that is misused by criminals, who take advantage of legal loopholes to commit their crimes,” Francisco Bustamente said Thursday in his first public statement since being appointed to the post.

The new entity will supervise a total of 16 business sectors that are frequently used to launder money “when the financial system is shielded,” the official, who worked for 18 years at the Inter-American Development Bank, said.

Those business sectors include casinos, pawnshops, jewelry stores, free zones, property development companies and car dealerships.

“We now exist because there’s a section of the economy that wasn’t being supervised,” Bustamente said.

Banks, insurance companies, cooperatives and the stock market will continue to be supervised by the normal regulatory bodies, the economist said.

The new supervisory body, which will have an initial staff of 20 officials, will monitor these business sectors to ensure that business leaders have sufficient information about their customers and report suspicious transactions, Bustamente said.

Panama created this body as it seeks to remove itself from the Financial Action Task Force’s “gray list.” It was added to that intergovernmental organization’s list in June 2014 due to deficiencies in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing.

“I’m convinced that we’re going to exit the FATF’s gray list in February 2016 … We’re taking the final steps,” Deputy Finance Minister Eyda Varela de Chinchilla said. EFE