This regulatory regime designates financial entities, among others, as Obligated Subjects (RO), which it installs as checkpoints to monitor and restrict access to the customer area with verified operations.
In turn, the regulation, registration and supervision of the RIs is in charge of the Financial Information Unit (FIU), a body created by law.
Lastly, the International Financial Action Task Force (GAFI), an intergovernmental organization of which Argentina is a member, issues recommendations to countries on the PLAFT.
At the level of businesses with crypto assets, the FATF proposed to list the Virtual Asset Service Providers (PSAV) as one more control fence in the implementation of the money laundering and terrorist financing prevention policy. .
In the bill raised by the Executive Branch, which is currently under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, the concept of PSAV is introduced; and so, Any person (human or legal) that, as a business, exchanges between virtual assets and fiduciary currencies or between virtual assets for or on behalf of a third party would be classed as a Regulated Subject, with duties and obligations before the FIU.
It is nothing new that Argentina is positioned as a very entrepreneurial place in the virtual currency business, with more than a dozen exchange houses (exchanges) organized as legal entities that offer their services to retail and wholesale clients.
In addition to the fact that several of these companies probably started as an individual ‘job’ that later grew and played in the ‘major league’, there are still a large number of people, very small entrepreneurs, often students, workers, retired or unemployed who manage to collect a few pesos for their home economy by teaching, accompanying and helping other people to enter the world of cryptocurrencies.
In these operations, Many times, peer-to-peer (or P2P) platforms that do not have a local presence intervene, and operations are carried out through the transfer of pesos by CBU or CVU.
This activity, which is of great social utility by contributing to shortening the digital divide, promoting innovation, promoting savings, generating a family livelihood and contributing the corresponding taxes to the State, among other benefits, is close to its disappearance, if the project of the Executive Branch is approved as it is prepared.
Complying with the burden implied by the duties and obligations of the Obligated Subjects is totally out of the effective possibilities of this group, so these people will find it necessary to stop operating or to continue doing so without registering, and thus be exposed to very severe sanctions, even inadvertently because they are not aware of the level of illegality to which they are exposed.
Along these lines, last week the NGO Bitcoin Argentina requested that individuals who, in the course of their activities, settle operations by bank transfer be explicitly excluded from the definition of PSAV -and therefore from being considered as SO- or non-banking in Payment Service Providers (PSP) in personal accounts; and/or virtual assets in accounts at PSAV.
It is absolutely unnecessary and redundant within the legislation for the prevention of asset laundering to add another duplicate control to the one that will already be carried out by financial entities such as PSPs and PSAVs.
Given that these activities will be subject to the know-your-customer policies, with follow-up and attention by the Obligated Subjects through which all their operations will be channeled, in no way can it be argued that these changes may be configuring a “liberated zone” or an unacceptable privilege.
FATF international standards will not only be fully satisfied, but will also contribute to promoting the generation of local platforms that contemplate these lawful, harmless and beneficial operations for the local economy while promoting competition.
With these changes, many people will be prevented from losing their jobs, from destroying the bridge that unites them with others in search of their well-being, from a few operators monopolizing the entire market, and from destroying their dreams of one day being able to play with the big ones.
Lawyer (UBA) and Master of Laws from Fordham University. Academic Director of the Diploma and Post-Diploma in Cryptoeconomics and Law of the NGO Bitcoin Argentina.
Source: Ambito
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