CHILE Law and Practice Contributed by: Jorge Bofill and César Ramos, Bofill Escobar Silva Abogados
7.2 Laws to Protect “Banking Secrecy” The general banking law states that the informa - tion on deposits received is subject to secrecy and can only be disclosed to the account holder or to people they have authorised. However, the public prosecutor may ask the judge to lift such banking secrecy if the crimi - nal investigation requires that information. Since this is an investigative measure that infringes the defendant’s right to privacy, the prosecutor must justify the request and the judge must reason their decision accordingly. Nonetheless, banks may disclose some infor - mation without a judicial order or the authorisa - tion of the account holder, but always in a broad sense. For example, a bank may state which products someone has in their portfolio, but it may not disclose the particulars of those prod - ucts (such as movements, amounts or any other information of that sort). Recently, Law No 21,713, established a proce - dure to lift banking secrecy in tax proceedings, which involves a request from the Internal Rev - enue Service and authorisation from a judge, if the legal requirements are met. It should be noted that there are a few bills that establish exceptions and limitations to banking secrecy, but these have not made much pro - gress in the Senate or the Chamber of Repre - sentatives.
7.3 Crypto-Assets There is no special regulation regarding crypto- assets, nor has there been a case ruling on these matters. However, since these are assets, they would probably be treated the same as any equi - ty in the context of damages or property loss. Chilean law is very out of date on issues regard - ing new technologies and the evolution of juridi - cal traffic in the digital era, though efforts are currently being made to bridge those gaps. In December 2022, Law No 21,459 incorporated certain computer crimes that were not previously recognised as offences in Chile, including differ - ent varieties of hacking, such as: • the illegal accessing of computer systems; • interference with the transmission of informa - tion; • attacks on the integrity of data;
• informatic falsehood; • informatic receiving; • informatic fraud; and • the abuse of devices.
Law No 21,521 was published in January 2023, promoting competition and financial inclusion through innovation and technology in the provi - sion of financial services. The effects of this new legislation are yet to be seen, but its promulga - tion is indicative of the previous lack of recogni - tion of this phenomenon, which certainly applies to cryptocurrencies and their treatment.
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