Argentina wants to pay off IMF loans with confiscated foreign assets

Buenos Aires. Argentina’s Senate voted 37-31 to pass a bill to pay off debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with undeclared dollars flowed abroad adopted. The initiators of the project estimate that around 20 billion US dollars can be raised in this way.

The draft envisages setting up a fund that would receive 20 percent of confiscated, undeclared assets. Six months after the law was passed, that contribution would rise to 35 percent. A levy should be levied on the values ​​discovered. Natural persons or banking institutions are said to contribute to the uncovering of these illegal foreign accounts as so-called “collaborators”. This would mean reforming the law on banking, stock exchange and tax secrecy and exceptions therein.

The fund is intended solely to pay for IMF loans. This could pay off a significant portion of the $44 billion in debt from Mauricio Macri’s previous government. Now the draft must also be approved by the Chamber of Deputies, where approval does not yet seem certain.

Within the fund, rewards for the “collaborators” are to be included. According to the first presentation in March, rewards should be up to 30 percent of the collected assets be.

The initiative was proposed by Oscar Parrilli, Senator of the governing coalition Frente de Todos (FdT), with the aim of “getting rid of the IMF”. He accused those who voted against that they not only had justified doubts, but that some even “supported the evaders”. He also acknowledged disagreements within the party, but mentioned that there was agreement not to let the IMF “govern”.

Die Opposition criticized however, precisely this disagreement within the FdT. Senators accused the FdT of “demagogy” and the bill “unconstitutionality”. The opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio designated the draft as “covert whitewashing”. Already in February you have remindedthat there were no guarantees that undeclared US dollars lying abroad could be repatriated by Argentines. “How can you confiscate goods that are not declared?”, asked such as MP Mario Negri.

According to various investigative papers, including the Panama, Paradise and Pandora Papers, there is $400 billion in assets owned by Argentines outside the country. Less than a third of this should be officially declared.

–