The Court of Defence of Free Competition (TDLC) in Chile is now in support of banks reopening crypto exchanges’ account in the country. This is in contrary to a supreme court ruling that Chilean banks have the right to close crypto exchanges accounts without warning.



Chile’s Court of Defense of Free Competition (TDLC)



As of recent, the request by Chilean banks to the Court of Defence of Free Competition (TDLC) in order to remove its injunction which prevents them from closing accounts that belong crypto exchanges in the country has been thrown out. Their request was said to be based on the ruling of the supreme court that was issued earlier which justified the closure of an account which belonged to a crypto exchange called Orionx by Bancoestado as legal.



Right after the ruling, the Chief Executive Officer of Criptomkt (one of the affected exchanges), Martín Jofré stated that: “For us, it is a success since we need bank accounts to operate in the market. In any case, we always rely on Chilean institutions, especially on the TDLC for its role as defender of free competition.”



A lawsuit was filed with the TDLC by virtual currency exchanges against 10 major banks in Chile in the previous year which accused the banks of unilaterally closing down their accounts. The court then ordered the banks to reopen accounts of the exchanges as the trial goes on.



Two out of the ten banks—Bancoestado and Itau, has however refiled a case with the country’s supreme court. The Supreme Court made sure to uphold its original stance as regards closing the accounts. To this effect, the bank has asked the TDLC to cancel its order for them to reopen accounts of the exchanges. The TDLC has however not yielded to this request.



Trials are in February



Consequentially, the legal advisor to Cryptomkt, Mario Bravo has also issued a statement addressing its plans to win its case against these banks.

Mario stated that: “the witnesses that we have cited, that is, the finance minister, the economy minister, the president of the central bank, the superintendents of banks, [and] the director of the UAF [Unidad De Analisis Financiero]” will give their testimonies to the TDLC in February.”



He concluded by saying that: “We believe that we will be able to prove that the banks illegitimately expel Buda and Cryptomkt from the market because they are companies that compete with them.”