Bill 631.

Summary.

Art. 1 proposes adding Article 15-A to Law 69 of 2007. It would require the Personal Records and Identification Office (Gabinete de Archivo e Identificación Personal) of the Judicial Investigation Directorate (Dirección de Investigación Judicial) to send banks and telecommunications operators operating in the Republic of Panama data on persons convicted of fraud or other fraudulent offenses. The transmission covers the various forms of those offenses defined in Chapter III, Fraud and Other Fraudulent Offenses, of Title VI, Offenses Against Economic Property, of Book Two of the Criminal Code (Código Penal). The bill links this transmission of data to situational crime prevention.

Article 15-A provides that banks and telecommunications operators would handle the transmitted data with the confidentiality applicable to them. It also provides for deletion of the data in accordance with the period set out in Article 5 of Law 66 of 2001. The provision thus connects receipt and handling of information about convictions with a rule on retention and deletion contained in that law. The confidentiality requirement applies to data received under the proposed provision.

In addition to receiving data about convicted persons, banks and telecommunications operators would have to exchange information with other participants in their respective markets. That exchange concerns alerts or warnings about possible fraudulent activities by their customers or consumers and is intended to prevent the possible commission of offenses. The bill therefore addresses both conviction data transmitted by the Personal Records and Identification Office and alerts or warnings shared among participants in the relevant market. Article 15-A presents both kinds of information as inputs for preventing the offenses it describes.

A bank or telecommunications operator would consider the information covered by the article alongside its other risk assessment criteria. It would use that assessment to decide whether to grant applications submitted by customers or consumers and to adopt risk management measures intended to prevent its services from being used to commit the specified offenses. The measures mentioned include restricting or suspending the services concerned. Art. 2 reiterates that the legislative change consists of adding Article 15-A to Law 69 of 2007. Art. 3 provides that the proposed law would take effect on the day following its promulgation.

The bill concerns the Personal Records and Identification Office, the Judicial Investigation Directorate and the National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional), as well as banks and telecommunications operators in the Republic of Panama. Its provisions could also concern other participants in those markets and their customers or consumers.