Legislator Javier Cambronero, head of the fraction of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), presented a bill to include the credit frauds as a crime in the Criminal Code.
According to the legislator, adding this type of crime to the Costa Rican legal framework is necessary to punish unscrupulous clients who cheat banks or financial entities.
In the last months, several credit operations granted by public banks have been questioned. This has demonstrated the urgency of having criminal tools to punish people who lie to financial institutions,”
explained Cambronero.
Credit scams or credit frauds would occur when someone presents incorrect or incomplete documents about the economic conditions of a mercantile society, a cooperative or commercial establishment. This includes balance sheets, loss of equity statements, patrimonial summary, etc. The penalty would be six months to three years in prison and a fine of thirty to one hundred days.
Cambronero added that a credit scam affects all the depositors of a bank.