An extraordinary power, an absent debate
The Supreme Court has just given the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) a financial panic button. Starting this Monday, the Treasury agency can freeze bank accounts without having to go through a judge. You only need ‘indications’ of laundering or financing of terrorism.
The plenary session endorsed it by majority, but unanimity was conspicuous by its absence. Minister Loretta Ortiz Ahlf’s project validated a reform that many jurists view with deep concern.
The Court concluded that this measure is preventive in nature and seeks to protect the stability of the financial system, without replacing the functions of the Public Ministry.
There’s the first official euphemism: ‘preventive’. Freezing someone’s money is not a harmless administrative gesture. It is a brutal intervention in the economic life of a person or company. And now it can happen by administrative decision, not judicial.
The alarms that sounded in the court itself
Minister Yasmín Esquivel Mossa was clear in her warning:
Blockades should not be indefinite or applied without clear criteria regarding their duration and justification, to avoid violations of due process.
Translation: this smacks of arbitrariness. What are ‘indications’? Who rates them? How long can the State keep your resources frozen while it ‘investigates’?
The ruling insists that it is a ‘temporary precautionary measure’, not a sanction. It also promises notification and the right to a subsequent hearing for those affected. But the sequence is revealing: first they act, then you defend yourself.
It is assumed that in a rule of law it is the other way around. Extreme coercive power – and freezing accounts is – comes from a judge, not an official. Today the Court diluted that principle in the name of ‘effectiveness’ against crime.
Institutional memory is short, but it should remember how tools created to prosecute serious crimes end up being used to silence dissent or harass opponents. The mechanism is ready. The only thing missing is the political will to pull the trigger.
The uncomfortable question that no one asked in this session: do we really believe that those who launder billions operate from bank accounts in their names, waiting to be blocked? Meanwhile, the common citizen sees the wall between him and the discretionary power of the State erode, once again.




