SCJN imposes greater requirements on UIF to block accounts

Mexico City. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) issued this Wednesday a jurisprudence that imposes more requirements on the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) to block accounts of alleged criminals at the “express request” of a foreign authority.

In a session of the Second Chamber, the ministers approved with three votes to two the project of Minister Alberto Pérez Dayán that resolved the contradiction of criteria 268/2023, an appeal filed by José Alfredo Cavazos Mercado, lawyer of the former governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco Javier García Cabeza of Cow.

With the vote against, Minister Lenia Batres warned that the Court’s decision limits the powers that the FIU needs to fully comply with Mexico’s commitments signed in international agreements against organized crime.

“We are misinterpreting article 94, in its eleventh paragraph of the Constitution, which establishes that we can interpret the Constitution and general norms, and in this case we are resolving a contradiction of jurisprudential criteria on the clarification of the term ‘express request’, which has the consequence of withdrawing from the Financial Intelligence Unit its powers to block accounts, which seems very delicate to me because we have signed international agreements, such as the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in which Mexico has been obliged to apply. the blocking of accounts among other precautionary measures, to combat money laundering,” he warned.

Batres’ statements were refuted by ministers Javier Laynez Potisek and Pérez Dayán, pointing out that far from affecting the FIU, the processes that must be followed in said case are clarified.

“No, the power that the FIU had to block an account is not being prevented. What is needed is the mechanism, that is, what the request made by the foreign authorities to address an express request consists of. That’s where the contradiction came from, if it was enough for an embassy authority, for example, of the United States to indicate that they are investigating a group of people and that is enough to consider that they are requesting a blockade or if they have to directly express , to say, I request the blocking of the so-and-so person. That’s what we resolved,” Laynez argued.

With new criteria issued by the Court, when an “express request” is presented to the FIU to block an account of an investigated person, “the request must be formulated by a foreign authority that has powers in the matter and the competence to require the deployment of such a measure and the request must be related to compliance with international commitments.”

“This frees the concept of ‘express request’ from rigidity, opening it to any manifestation of will that leads the Mexican authority to proceed to block people even without resorting to the specific formula of express request. As long as it is understood as such, this is how it is possible to proceed in favor of legal security and the financial intelligence unit itself. Now that this interpretation is known, it will facilitate the exercise of the powers that each of them has,” justified Pérez Dayán.