Law on Usurious Credits
Congreso Nacional
- Decree: 100-62
- Published: January 1, 1962
- Issuing body: Congreso Nacional
- Category: Criminal
Summary
This law protects borrowers by limiting the interest rates that private lenders can charge. It establishes that charging excessive interest (usury) is a crime, and courts must reduce those obligations to the maximum permitted limit and return overpaid money. It also prohibits charging commissions on loans.
Articles
The maximum non-banking interest that private parties may stipulate in their contracts shall be fixed by the Ministry of Finance, periodically and taking into account the situation of the capital market and the amount of the sums that produce it. The interest rate may not exceed six points above the maximum established for banking operations.
Contracts in which an interest rate greater than that fixed by the Ministry of Finance is agreed upon shall be considered usurious. The civil courts of justice shall not render any judgment based on usurious interest, and must reduce in their sentences, or in the execution thereof, to the maximum interest limit fixed by the Ministry of Finance, the payment obligations arising from those contracts. Likewise, said courts shall impute to the payment of principal the amounts that debtors have paid as interest in excess of the non-usurious rate.
In loan contracts, the lender may not in any case charge the borrower, directly or through an intermediary, any amount whatsoever as a commission. The violation of this Article shall be punished as theft.
The collection of usurious interest shall give rise to an action for unjust enrichment.
The lender commits the crime of usury who violates the provision set forth in paragraph 1 of Article 2 of this Law. Also constitutive of this crime is any simulation or practice intended to conceal the true interest rate, or to conceal in another contractual form or to agree upon a usurious loan. While the Penal Code does not establish the penalties applicable to those who commit the crime of usury, created by this Article, those corresponding to fraud shall be applied.
This Decree shall enter into force from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette "La Gaceta". Given in the Session Hall of the National Congress, in Tegucigalpa, D.C. on the sixteenth day of the month of July of nineteen hundred sixty-two. Modesto Rodas Alvarado H. Abraham Zúñiga Rivas Secretary President Secretary T. Danilo Paredes Secretary
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