Dollar: during the current administration, more than 130 agencies and exchange houses were disabled

During the current administration, the Central Bank (BCRA) disqualified more than 130 agencies and exchange houses, due to various irregularities, and suspended a total of 81 importers for breaches of the Criminal Exchange Law, according to sources from the monetary authority to Ambit.

Audits and controls of the entity led by Miguel Pesce determined that the importing companies involvedwhich are still being investigated, irregularly acquired some u$s375 million, for which reason they still remain disabled to operate in the official exchange market (MULC).

On the other hand, as measures to control illegal operations in the foreign exchange trade, of the 214 exchange agencies that existed at the beginning of this administration, 120 were closed due to various irregularities and only 94 remain in operation. Also after inspections more than half of the exchange houses were disabled and of the 27 existing ones they were reduced to 12 at present.

The controls carried out by the BCRA “made it possible to reduce non-compliance in the order of 0.2% of the total volume of imports from the country. In the same way, the controls achieved the liquidation of foreign currency for more than 98% of exports, while the balance is in court, as in the cases of Vicentín and Díaz Forti,” the sources indicated.

Once concluded, the foreign exchange proceedings, both for imports and exports, are turned for the beginning of criminal proceedings, whose processing is also in charge of the BCRA. In these cases, the Law 19,359 states that the sentence must be imposed by the economic criminal justice of the Capital or by federal judges in the interior of the country.

In the process, the BCRA requests the Justice to seize the company’s assets and in most of the cases its directors have, at the request of the BCRA, impediments to leave the country.

In the case of importers, the suspensions occurred within the framework of more than 258 exchange inspections carried out by the monetary agency for an estimated amount equivalent to US$3,050 millionwhere he sought to detect different illegal maneuvers to access the exchange market.

Importers can only access the exchange market after obtaining the authorizations of the organizations that intervene in the formation of the company and in the definition of its economic/financial profile and customs controls. In addition to the prior checks carried out by the agencies of the Executive Power and the financial entities involved, the BCRA carries out checks that made it possible to detect failures and initiate legal proceedings.