The legal criterion for processing foreign exchange summary proceedings has changed, reinstating 80% of natural or legal persons who have been under investigation for foreign exchange crimes, mostly minor infringements. As a result, the summary proceedings conducted against around 60,000 persons will be discontinued as the transactions for which they were accused are considered fully legitimate today.
The Board of the BCRA has instructed the Superintendence of Financial and Foreign Exchange Institutions (SEFyC) to apply the legal principle of “retroactive criminal law when it is beneficial to the accused” in foreign exchange matters. The decision has been based on the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice’s ruling in the cases Cristalux and Docuprint, which determined that any regulations issued by the public administration at a later date apply to conduct previously considered to be in breach of the foreign exchange criminal regime if such newly adopted regulations are more beneficial to the accused.
On the basis of this decision, summary or pre-summary proceedings initiated for breaches of foreign exchange restrictions that are no longer in force will be discontinued. This involves purchases of foreign currency for tourist purposes without submitting supporting documents of the trip, withdrawal of US dollars from foreign ATMs in excess of the limits allowed in the past, remittances to support family members abroad in excess of the limits allowed in the past, or inconsistencies in validation codes. The new scheme will allow the SEFyC to get involved in, and direct its resources towards, investigating more serious and larger scale foreign exchange violations by speeding up procedural time frames and dealing more efficiently with the most recent cases.
In this way, 80% of taxpayer identification codes (CUIT) that are now banned from operating in the Free and Single Foreign Exchange Market (Mercado Único y Libre de Cambios, MULC) will no longer be persecuted for foreign exchange violations. This calculation does not include those cases in which the violation investigated relates to foreign trade regulations. With the unification of the foreign exchange market established last December, the BCRA seeks to ensure that the foreign exchange market develops free of any such restrictions that may hinder economic growth, while monitoring strict compliance with current regulations.
