Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies, in Mexico City Chamber of Deputies / EFE
The Chamber of Deputies has postponed this Tuesday the discussion of the controversial reform of the Bank of Mexico law.
The debate will resume in January with a series of actors and it is intended to be put to a vote in February 2021. The reform had been approved quickly in the Senate thanks to the majority of Morena last week and needs the observations and approval of the second chamber.
The modifications to the rule had led to the rejection of the banking authorities and various financial organizations, considering that it opened the doors to money laundering and limited the autonomy of the central bank.
Even the Secretary of the Treasury, Arturo Herrera, has acknowledged that "the very important implications for the Mexican financial system" that this reform implied had not been analyzed.
Herrera has considered “adequate to give space to have a more technical and in-depth discussion”.
The deputy of Morena Óscar González Yáñez, president of the Transparency and Anticorruption Commission, has also considered this postponement correct since "there are many doubts."
The reform of the Banco de México law obliged the institution to accept the remainder in dollars that citizens could not exchange in commercial banks.
The objective of the reform, according to its promoter, Senator Ricardo Monreal, was to facilitate the exchange of remittances received in dollars.
“[The families] will have the assurance that the dollars received can always be exchanged for pesos at the banks.
The same for those people who depend on tourism, "the politician wrote in a column for this newspaper on Tuesday.
But the reform had met with almost unanimous rejection from the banking community.
The Association of Banks of Mexico warned that it was putting "the entire Mexican financial system at serious risk."
The remittance argument has little support, experts say.
So far this year more than 99% of money transfers have been made electronically, not in cash.
In addition, the monetary authorities had warned that the rule opened the doors to money laundering by organized crime by forcing the Bank of Mexico to accept as part of its international reserves those dollars that Mexican commercial institutions had not been able to repatriate.
"It opens the possibility of entry of resources of illicit origin not only to the Mexican financial circuit, but directly to international reserves," explained in an interview with this newspaper the deputy governor of the institution, Gerardo Esquivel.
The head of the Government's Financial Intelligence Unit, Santiago Nieto, has also requested "a broader and more technical discussion to face the problem of cash dollars and the need for their incorporation without generating money laundering risks."
The reform has sparked speculation about who benefited from such changes.
Independent senator Emilio Álvarez Icaza has indicated that Banco Azteca lobbied among legislators before approval by the Senate.
The bank's owner, businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a member of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's business advisory council, has been one of the few to publicly defend the changes in the law.
The change in rules has raised blisters in an institution very suspicious of its powers.
Since 1994, Banco de México has autonomy to decide monetary policy according to the Constitution.
The obligation to buy the remnants in dollars would imply, according to experts, adjusting the bank balance based on non-technical criteria and may further erode business confidence at a very delicate time due to the economic crisis of the coronavirus.