Based on the above, it is clear, first, that, in exercise of the powers embodied in article
31, the Bank continued to be an administrative body or entity and that, in the matter in
question, it acted as such. The judgment repeatedly considered this to be so.22
Second, it is unquestionable that the Bank’s decisions under the provisions of this article
did not consist in decisions adopted under the contentious jurisdiction by a “judge or
tribunal” or by a “State body (that without being a judge or tribunal as such) adopts
decisions on the determination of the rights of the individual” or that exercises
“functions of a substantially jurisdictional nature.”
And this is because there is no evidence in the case file that, under article 31, there had
been the express or implicit intention to transform the Bank into a jurisdictional instance
or to grant it jurisdictional or contentious judicial powers, or that it had acted, in relation
to the said provision, based on the presumption that it had powers of this nature. To the
contrary, the judgment, although it is based on the assumption that there is a dispute,
indicates that it was “decided to create a special procedure and delegate decisions to an
administrative body that allegedly had limitations in this regard” and, therefore, it
considered that the State “should have ensured that the body entrusted with
determining them had the necessary competence to make a complete analysis of the
requirements established in article 31.”23 In other words, it is evident that the said
administrative body, the Bank, was not granted the necessary powers to exercise a
jurisdictional function.
The foregoing is also revealed in the judgment when it affirms that article 31 created “a
special procedure to deal with the petitions of those who considered that they fulfilled
the corresponding requirements; and called for the establishment of a technical
committee (the Advisory Commission) responsible for examining the petitions and
advising the Board of the Central Bank of Uruguay, the administrative body that had to
adopt the corresponding decisions.”24 In this way the judgment is indicating that, all
things considered, it does not find that the petitions formulated under this provision are
real remedies against a decision adopted by a State body, but only a mechanism to
benefit from the provisions of the said article. And it also declares that “[a]n appeal for
annulment of the decisions of the Board of the Central Bank could be made before the
Contentious-Administrative Tribunal” and that this remedy “can be filed once the
administrative remedies have been exhausted.”25 Thus, in the final analysis, the
judgment considers that the decisions adopted by the Bank under the provisions of
article 31 form part of the administrative and not the jurisdictional procedure.
Third, it can also be concluded that, since the Bank adopted the pertinent decisions
under administrative proceedings, rejecting or accepting to grant the individuals the
rights established by article 31, prior to the issue of these decisions, there was no
dispute in this regard. Hence, it was only after the Bank’s refusal to grant these rights to
the “depositors of the Banco de Montevideo and the Banco La Caja Obrera, whose
deposits have been transferred to other institutions without their consent,” that “the
right [emerged] of those affected to be able to resort to a body that would decide it;
that would settle the dispute owing to its jurisdiction and competence”26; that is to say,
and in keeping with the meaning of the word “to determine,”27 to ascertain or establish
the terms of those rights that had been denied, as indeed, happened with regard to the
interested parties who exercised this right. It is only logical that, before they proved that
22
Paras. 139 and 140.
23
Para. 140.
24
Para. 127.
25
Paras. 101 and 102.
26
Dissenting opinion of Judges, cit.
27
Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, Oxford University Press, 2008
7
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