Seprelad had no better initiative than to make every citizen who uses the services of an exchange house a suspect of money laundering, starting at a thousand dollars. Resolution 248 contradicts Law 2794/05.
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Law 2794 “On exchange entities and / or exchange houses” was promulgated on December 5, 2005.
Article 3 of the law mentions the following: “The exchange economic system is made up of exchange houses, branches, agencies, auxiliary boxes; and exchange brokers ”.
The same legal body, in title 12, article 79, defines exchange brokers in the following way: “Any physical person of visible or ideal existence who carries out, with express authorization of the Central Bank of Paraguay, is called exchange broker, usual commercial transactions between the supply and demand of foreign currency, provided that it is on own account and the operation does not exceed the equivalent of ten thousand US dollars, per day ”(bold are ours).
On November 5, 2020, the Secretariat for the Prevention of Money or Property Laundering (Seprelad) approved resolution 248 “aimed at exchange houses” in a specific way.
Resolution 248/20 obliges all citizens to prove the origin of their money, starting at a thousand dollars, when using the service of an exchange house.
Law 2794 says that street money changers can change up to $ 10,000 a day, legally.
Seprelad, by means of a resolution, establishes that exchange houses cannot exchange 1,000 dollars if the interested party does not prove where he got the money from.
The lawyer Diego Marcet, legal director of Seprelad, said that it is not a problem to comply with this requirement: “The exchange house client has up to 60 days to deliver the documentation.”
Seprelad is fearful of an evaluation to be carried out by the Latin American Financial Action Task Force (Gafilat), an intergovernmental institution made up of 17 countries. Gafilat’s goal is to establish common mechanisms to combat money laundering and terrorism.
All suspects
Resolution 248/20 is an attempt to cover the serious problems that exist in Paraguay with money laundering.
The government of Mario Abdo Benítez seeks to get out of Gafilat’s gray list and for this it resorts to a clumsy and clearly illegal mechanism.
The lawyer Diego Marcet speaks of the need to know the clients of the exchange houses, for that reason the requirement to show where he got the equivalent of three minimum wages, to go to an exchange house.
Resolution 248 is a tightening for the common citizen who is now suspected of laundering money for changing a thousand dollars.
The same stubbornness that lawyer Diego Marcet exhibits to turn us all into suspects should have to take a tour of one of Horacio Cartes’ cigarette factories: nobody knows where the money comes from or who buys the cigarette and then smuggles it into neighbor countries.
That is where the root of a good part of our ills lies, not in the common citizen who wants to change a few Guaraníes.
Seprelad is an institution that depends on the Presidency of the Republic.
Not a word about street moneychangers
The financial market must have clear rules for all sectors involved. Seprelad, whose owner is the lawyer Carlos Arregui, broke the balance by imposing a resolution that affects only and exclusively the formal exchange houses.
Resolution 248 applies to exchange houses, not informal money changers. Any amount can be changed on the street, without control, without documentation and without paying taxes.
Now Seprelad makes a citizen a suspect for exchanging a thousand dollars. It could finance terrorism, they say.
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