Summary
The Global Forum rated Guatemala overall Non-Compliant with the international standard of transparency and exchange of information on requests handled over the period from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017. Serious deficiencies in the domestic legal framework prevents Guatemala from giving full effect to its EOI network which, with the Multilateral Administrative Assistance Convention in force, is wide enough to cover all relevant partner jurisdictions. In Guatemala, the tax authority cannot access banking information due to Constitutional safeguards and therefore it is not able to share this information with a requesting party. In addition, accounting information cannot be exchanged since it is equally covered by constitutionally protected rights. In the only request received in the review period, legal ownership information was provided, while accounting information was denied. Other issues identified during the review concerned the weak implementation and supervision of beneficial ownership requirements and the existence of bearer shares without definitive measures taken to deal with them.
