The Argentine capital markets regulator this Friday “preemptively” suspended the securities company Santander Valores, owned by Banco Santander ArgentinaAs confirmed to EFE by the institution’s spokespersons, operating with its own portfolio or on behalf of third parties on the stock exchange.
The measure was taken after the National Securities Commission (CNV) confirmed that “the operations carried out this Friday violated existing regulations with an aggravating factor of strong exceedance of regulated thresholds,” sources said. , regarding the operation to purchase the so-called fiscal dollar.
This Friday, securities firm Santander Valores received a request for information from CNV to verify whether a client had complied with a rule restricting foreign exchange transactions in the local market on October 10.
As a result of this request for information, CNV confirmed that: Santander Valores “violated” general resolution 981 “which imposes restrictions on large capital operations”Because this reveals that agencies must notify five days in advance of dollar purchasing operations exceeding 200 million pesos (538 thousand euros at the official exchange rate).
This is a standard that is part of a set of standards. Measures aimed at reducing volatility in the market for the so-called financial dollar and reaches out to investors and securities agents from abroad – intermediaries such as stock companies and banks – and large local investors. Specifically, the rule requires local investors to provide five business days’ notice through a sworn declaration that must be sent to CNV by the listed companies if the amount of the transaction is more than 200 million pesos per day.
For CNV, Santander Valores “not only failed to fulfill its obligation to notify CNV five days in advance, but also carried out operations at a value well above the established limit”. The limit of these operations is 200 million pesos, 4,000 million pesos were carried out pesos for a particular customer.
Argentina restricts access to the official foreign exchange market and imposes a number of regulations on the purchase of foreign currency from the financial market to limit the increase in parallel exchange rates relative to official exchange rates; This reveals the lack of a difference of more than 100% due to the abundance of foreign exchange and the weakness of the local currency in the South American country.
A statement from Santander Valores confirmed that the brokerage firm had received “a request from CNV for administrative information about the firm’s clients” and that the request was “about Santander Valores’ duly documented operations.” “Santander Valores, as always, strictly complies with requests for information from regulatory authorities,” the statement said, adding that it “has sufficient information about the source of funds for all its customers and all its operations.”
Santander Argentina bank is one of the main private institutions in the Argentine financial system; It has 464 branches, more than 3.5 million customers and employs 8,900 people.