May 13, 2016
U.S. states Nevada, Wyoming and Delaware are facing growing pressure to address their lack of corporate transparency, as the United States and the international community continue to respond to fallout from the Panama Papers.
At a London anti-corruption summit on Thursday, representatives from the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Isle of Man warned that the “hypocrisy” of the U.S. was hurting the global push for greater financial transparency. The U.S. states of Wyoming and Nevada both came under closer scrutiny from within the United States earlier in the week, when Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to the secretaries of state for the two states, demanding more information about how the companies revealed in the Panama Papers are regulated.
“I have become increasingly concerned about the use of anonymous shell companies as vehicles for terrorists financing, tax evasion, and fraud targeting major government programs,” Wyden wrote.