Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has resigned as chairman of a Panamanian government commission set up to investigate the country’s offshore financial industry in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, saying the panel was not given full independence.z

Stiglitz and Mark Pieth, a Swiss anti-corruption expert, wrote Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela on Friday that they were pulling out of the study committee because they fear government officials will limit the panel’s freedom to investigate and keep its final report secret.

They wrote that government officials had declined to commit to public release of the panel’s report and instead had insisted the group’s findings would be the “property” of the government and that Panamanian authorities would have “sole responsibility” for any public announcements. Such restrictions, they said, made no sense.

“How can a group allegedly committed to transparency write a report that is not transparent? It would undermine our own credibility,” Stiglitz said in telephone interview Friday afternoon. “Evidently they wanted us to be part of a charade to convince people they were serious when in fact they weren’t.”

A government spokesperson said Panamanian officials regretted Stiglitz and Pieth’s exit from the panel, adding that the government “understands both resignations” are related to “internal differences.”

In their resignation letter, Stiglitz and Pieth urged that the committee disband. Stiglitz said he and Pieth will likely issue their own separate report.

Panamanian authorities established the panel — appointing four members from Panama and three from outside the country — in April.

Varela called for the creation of the committee after a group of journalists from the Toronto Star, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 other media partners revealed how the Panama-headquartered law firm Mossack Fonseca set up hard-to-trace shell companies for politicians, professional athletes, organized crime figures and money launderers from around the world.

Amid the resulting media firestorm, Varela said that he was committed to “bulletproofing” Panama’s financial services sector “against threats from people and groups who want to use it for illegal activities.”

The commission is supposed to recommend changes to make it more difficult for foreigners to use Panama’s financial sector for illegal purposes.

Pieth said in an interview Friday with Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger that he and Stiglitz decided to resign after a government official recently sent them a letter saying the government wouldn’t commit to releasing the report.

Pieth told Tages-Anzeiger that he and Stiglitz agreed that “we don’t write secret reports. If you want to have a clean financial centre, transparency is the top priority.”

Stiglitz, a professor at New York’s Columbia University, shared the 2001 Nobel prize in economics. Pieth is a professor of law and criminology at Basel University. He spent more than 20 years as the chair of the OECD’s working group on corporate bribery.

Later Friday afternoon, Panamanian officials distributed a nine-page document that describes itself as the committee’s July 2016 “interim report.”

The document recommends more reporting requirements for offshore companies and suggests other changes in the country’s regulatory practices. It says Panama should try to reduce and, if possible, eliminate “all forms” of “illicit” money flows.

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Stiglitz and Pieth, however, said they had played no role in writing the document. Had they done so, they said, they would have made recommendations that “go far beyond” those that appear in the document.