AMMAN — The
Lower House on Thursday approved an
amendment to the Penal Code that removed the penalty for issuing checks without
balance.
اضافة اعلان
Deputies approved the amendment as received from the
government; it will come into effect after three years, for markets to adapt to
the decriminalization of bad checks. As such, Article 421 of the Penal Code
will no longer apply once the amendment takes effect.
President of the Bar Association
Mazen Irshaidat believes that “this is a risky decision that will have a negative impact on
commercial and bank transactions”.
According to him, the amendment “will trigger an
economic recession because traders will now opt for cash sales and will not
accept to be paid later.”
A check is recognized as cash under the law, as it
is a document that is payable once presented, he added.
“The check has lost this feature now,” Irshaidat
said, adding that “this definition must be adjusted in pertinent laws since
there is a conflict between the Penal Code and the Commercial Code”.
After three years, there will be no longer
imprisonment for checks without balance, but civil suits may still be filed by
the wronged party, said Ghazi Thunaibat, a lawmaker and member of the
Lower House Legal Committee.
The check will be treated in the same way as a
commercial paper or a bill of exchange in terms of legal procedures, he said,
added that the Implementation Law, which stipulates that if the amount of a bad
check is greater than JD5,000 imprisonment is imposed, will remain valid.
Thunaibat admitted that dealing with this issue
represented a big challenge for the deputies, “but a solution was needed since
the country was facing a difficult situation as a result of the large number of
bad checks, which evolved into a credit tool, rather than a fulfillment tool”.
“The number of checks without balance is close one
million, resulting in the creation of a false economy, and this situation had
to be addressed by introducing the amendment,” he said.
People will gradually get used to the decision in
the coming three years, he said, adding that the government was no longer
capable of guaranteeing people’s rights and “the responsibility of dealing with
non-paying companies and individuals should fall on the person who deals with
them, not the government”.
According to Thunaibat, there are 148,000 arrest
warrants for people writing bad checks.
“As a human rights activist, I find it difficult to
comprehend the mindset of lawmakers in introducing this amendment,” said Issa
Almaraziq, director of the
National Center for Human Rights’ awareness and
training department.
“It simply means that the state is no longer
responsible for protecting people’s rights,” he added.
According to him, the amendment is a violation of
the principles of international law because a check has always been a tool of
fulfillment, just as cash.
He stressed that the
Jordanian economy will suffer as a
result of this decision.
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