MEXICO

On September 13, the director of the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV in Spanish), Juan Pablo Graf, assumed the presidency of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). The official replaces Tarek Amer, Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt, in the global financial network made up of central banks and banking supervisors in 89 countries, which generates recommendations to advance banking penetration in the world. In addition, the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Santiago Nieto, called on the government to implement innovative measures to control the transactions with cryptocurrencies and that the responsibility for their supervision should lie with the entity itself.

The CNBV director, who will hold the AFI’s presidential post for two years, stated that the priority will be placed on youth, migrants and rural populations, with a view to expanding financial inclusion globally. In addition, according to the global financial organization, the representatives of the network will hold a new meeting between September 28 and 30 to carry out the Policy Leadership Dialogue, a space in which they will discuss the possible measures to be applied in order to achieve an inclusive and sustainable economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Santiago Nieto pointed out that in the short term, the governments should be able to adapt to the fact that financial users carry out economic transactions that do not go through traditional financial services (such as the consumption of virtual assets). In addition, they will have to make political decisions regarding the use of blockchain technology, which allows anonymity in financial transactions, and therefore favors the incursion of activities such as money laundering.

In turn, he mentioned that the State must regulate the obligated financial subjects so that they apply monitoring processes that allow them to safely control who their clients and final beneficiaries are, the nature and purpose of their commercial relationships and the source of the resources at stake. Finally, he pointed out that the FIU or the CNBV as entities should be in charge of the fiscal control of the use of cryptocurrencies, without the supervision falling on the Tax Administration Service (SAT in Spanish).