Unfairness of the partial criminal foreign exchange amnesty granted by the Tax Amnesty Law

For the first time in a proceeding initiated by the Central Bank against an Argentine company for an alleged infraction of the criminal foreign exchange regime, consisting of a delay beyond the regulatory deadline in bringing to Argentina and selling for pesos the foreign currency proceeds of an export, a judge has deemed “unfair” amnesty for criminal foreign exchange infractions that benefited only those who qualified for the tax amnesty granted by Law No. 26,476.

In the arguments of his acquittal decision in the proceeding “Huyck Argentina S.A.”, the Judge for Criminal Economic Matters Marcelo Aguinsky highlighted “the unfairness of the situation generated by the adoption of Law 26,476, which is evidenced in the matter of this proceeding, in which an export company, that is, a company whose productive activity is in itself valuable due to its contribution to general welfare, continues to be subject to monetary sanctions by the mere fact of a regulatory breach of a formal nature – specifically, the alleged late sale of foreign currency proceeds – while someone who today decides to disclose assets that had been kept hidden, is exempt and safe from any kind of charge and sanction.”

Although the judge based the acquittal of the company and its president on the retroactive application of the longer deadlines for selling foreign currency export proceeds adopted later by the Central Bank (principle of mandatory retroactivity of the more benign criminal law, as recognized by the Supreme Court in its ruling “Docuprint S.A.”), his statement about the unfairness of the partial amnesty for criminal foreign exchange infractions granted by Law No. 26,476 constitutes a valuable precedent for the defense in future criminal foreign exchange proceedings.