When the Official Fails and the State Foots the Bill: The Civil Recourse Action in Bolivia in Light of the Contaminated Petrol Case

A legal reading of the 2026 adulterated fuel episode: why the Bolivian system reaches, with no exception for rank, any public servant whose act or omission causes financial loss to the State.

A recent case worth reading in legal terms

In early 2026, thousands of vehicle owners in Bolivia began reporting unusual mechanical damage — accelerated carbon build-up on pistons, blocked injectors, broken valves — caused by the combustion of a foreign substance present in petrol distributed nationwide. By the first days of March the Ministry of Hydrocarbons had registered more than 6,600 compensation claims; by early April, formal complaints exceeded ten thousand (Infobae, 8 April 2026). The authorities activated an out-of-court compensation mechanism administered by YPFB and subsequently reported the existence of a fuel-adulteration network that mixed petrol and diesel with water and oil before the product entered the country.

Beyond the media coverage and the inevitable political controversy, the underlying legal question is structural: once the State or its insurer has compensated those affected, what happens to the public servant whose act or omission made the harm possible? The answer — the civil recourse action, or acción de repetición — is one of the least visible mechanisms in the Bolivian system of public liability. It is worth explaining calmly because, properly understood, it reaches every public servant without distinction of rank: from the technician who signs a quality certificate to, if it comes to that, the holder of the Presidency of the State.

This article does not set out to point at any particular individual. It seeks to explain, rigorously, how the system is designed and what it requires in order to operate. The interesting question is not “who is to blame” in the media sense; it is “which specific officials, at any point in the chain, failed to discharge particular duties they were bound to perform”, and how the legal order responds to them.

1. The constitutional hinge: Article 113 of the Constitution

Article 113 of the Constitution is the keystone of the system. Paragraph I recognises the victim’s right to timely indemnification, reparation and compensation where their rights are infringed. Paragraph II introduces, in mandatory terms, a second obligation: where the State is ordered to make reparation, it “shall bring a recourse action against the authority or public servant responsible for the act or omission that caused the harm”. The verb chosen — deberá, “shall” — admits of no discretionary reading. The recourse action is not a power the State may exercise if it sees fit; it is a constitutional duty.

This architecture is accompanied by two provisions that shield the system in temporal and axiological terms. Article 232 enshrines responsibility as one of the governing principles of public administration. Article 324 provides that debts arising from financial loss caused to the State are not subject to any limitation period, a rule the Plurinational Constitutional Court has recognised as a principle of supra-legal rank in Judgment SCP 0790/2012. To these must be added Article 75, which recognises the right of consumers and users to be supplied with products that are safe and of adequate quality and quantity; the distribution of contaminated petrol infringes that right directly.

2. The SAFCO Act: liability without distinction of rank

Law No. 1178 on Government Administration and Control [Ley de Administración y Control Gubernamentales], known as the SAFCO Act, operates as Bolivia’s general statute on the liability of public officials. Article 1(c) establishes as one of its guiding purposes that every public servant, without distinction of rank, shall assume full responsibility for their acts. Article 28 develops the principle: every public servant answers for the results arising from the performance of the functions, duties and powers attached to their post, and administrative, executive, civil and criminal liability is determined by reference to the results of the act or omission.

The phrase “without distinction of rank” deserves emphasis. The system contemplates no zone of civil immunity attaching to office. The operations manager of a plant, the technician who signs a quality certificate, the head of a regulatory unit, the minister responsible and, ultimately, any senior authority of the State fall under the same legal regime as regards civil liability arising from public office.

Three provisions of the same statute complete the picture. Article 31 defines civil liability as that which arises where the act or omission of a public servant causes the State loss capable of monetary valuation, and expressly includes the joint responsibility of the superior who authorised the improper use of assets or services, or where such use was made possible by deficiencies in the systems of administration and internal control. Article 32 gives statutory expression to the recourse action: a State entity ordered to pay damages “shall recover the payment from the authority found responsible”. Article 33, for its part, provides a reasonable ground of exclusion: there is no liability where it is shown that the decision was taken in pursuit of the greatest benefit and within the risks inherent in the operation, or in circumstances of force majeure.

3. The recourse action: what it is and what it requires

In simple terms, the recourse action is the mechanism by which a party who has paid another’s debt recovers the sum paid from the person truly responsible. Where the payer is the State — whether under a court judgment or through an out-of-court compensation scheme such as the SREC set up in the fuel case — the action has constitutional (Article 113(II) of the Constitution), statutory (Article 32 of the SAFCO Act) and regulatory (Article 57 of Supreme Decree 23318-A) foundations.

Gil Botero and Rincón Córdoba (2016) specify that the recourse action is a judicial mechanism of constitutional origin and statutory development, pursuing a civil claim in compensation, founded on the fault-based liability of the public agent and available exclusively on grounds of wilful misconduct or gross negligence. In the same work, the authors stress that its purpose is not merely retributive but preventive, since it seeks to deter public servants from acting with manifest negligence or wilfully. Failure to bring the action within the applicable period, they add, carries disciplinary consequences for the legal representative of the entity and confers subsidiary standing on the public prosecution service. That reading is entirely consistent with Article 113(II) of the Constitution: for the Procuraduría General del Estado [State Attorney General’s Office] this is not an option but a duty. As Añez Núñez and Santiago Salame (2017) observe in their commentary on the Bolivian Constitutional Procedure Code, if recourse is not made effective, the parties truly harmed end up being all taxpayers.

Four requirements must be met for the action to succeed. First, prior payment by the State or its insurer, since the recourse action by definition presupposes that the victim has been compensated. Second, a causal link between the official’s specific conduct, whether act or omission, and the harm actually caused. Third, wilful misconduct or gross negligence; a mere administrative irregularity or a contested policy decision does not, of itself, ground the agent’s personal civil liability. Fourth, and particular to the Bolivian system, the civil liability opinion issued by the Contraloría General del Estado [Office of the Comptroller General] (Article 43 of the SAFCO Act and Article 51 of Supreme Decree 23318-A), which constitutes pre-constituted evidence.

On this last point an important qualification is in order: the Comptroller’s opinion is not a formal jurisdictional requirement, in the sense that a claim could not even be filed without it, but rather an evidentiary condition whose absence would substantially weaken the claim.¹ The judicial route is not closed by its lack, but its presence strengthens the case in evidentiary terms.

The scholarship on causation reinforces the rigour the system demands. Panisello Martínez (2022) warns that the causal relationship between the act producing the harm and the harm itself is an essential requirement for compensation, and that this relationship must be actually proved rather than presumed. Gil Botero (2020), for his part, sets out the analysis as a two-sided inquiry: factual attribution (imputatio facti), to establish whether the harm is attributable at the material level, and legal attribution (imputatio iuris), to determine the normative basis of the duty to make reparation. In cases of omission — and this is crucial for cases such as the fuel episode — the analysis turns on whether there was a legal duty to prevent the outcome and whether the omitted act was genuinely capable of preventing it.

4. Public service and the strict liability of the State

Before turning to the official, the institutional liability of the State must be correctly located, since the recourse action is triggered by it. Under Bolivian law, the distribution of petrol is not an ordinary commercial activity. Article 14 of Hydrocarbons Law No. 3058 expressly classifies as a public service the transport, refining, storage, marketing and distribution of refined petroleum products on the domestic market, with the statutory requirement that they be provided regularly and continuously.²

That statutory classification is not trivial. As Balbín (2021) recalls from Argentine scholarship, a service is public not because the State owns it but because the State assumes responsibility for its provision in order to satisfy rights; where the service is provided under exceptional monopoly conditions, the State must regulate all the more stringently. In the terms of Bolivian law itself, the distribution of contaminated petrol amounts to irregular provision of a public service, which triggers the direct liability of the State.

Comparative scholarship agrees in substance. Mir Puigpelat (2002) explains that the Spanish regime of State liability establishes liability that is always direct rather than subsidiary, and strict in character: the citizen need not establish fault or unlawfulness on the part of the agent in order to be compensated. In the same vein, Mosset Iturraspe (1982a) maintains that, as the law now stands, the irresponsibility of the State is legally inadmissible, particularly where the State operates public services — including monopolised ones — that cause harm. Trigo Represas and López Mesa (2004) confirm the three constituent elements of this liability: (i) harm to those subject to the administration, (ii) attributability to the administration by reason of its normal or abnormal functioning, and (iii) a causal relationship between the act attributed and the harm actually caused. They add that the harm must be unlawful, that is, that the individual must be under no legal duty to bear it.

Tamayo Jaramillo (2007) further warns that, in dangerous activities, the responsible party is exonerated only by proving an extraneous cause — the victim’s own act, the act of a third party, or force majeure — with the burden of proof reversed in favour of the injured party. And Mosset Iturraspe (1982b), drawing on the theory of created risk, adds that whoever creates a special risk must bear the harm flowing from it, in accordance with the principle ubi emolumentum, ibi onus.

Applied to the Bolivian case, the conclusion is clear: no vehicle owner is under a legal duty to bear mechanical damage caused by adulterated fuel distributed by a State-owned company operating as a monopoly. The State’s liability for that harm is direct and strict, and is triggered by the irregular provision of the service alone.

5. The insurer’s subrogation: a second route to reopening the account

Where compensation is channelled through insurance, as happened here with the so-called seguro solidario [solidarity insurance] administered by YPFB, the indemnity paid by the insurer does not extinguish the chain of liability; in parallel, it triggers subrogation. Article 1060 of the Commercial Code provides that an insurer who pays the indemnity is thereby subrogated to the insured’s claims and rights against the third parties responsible for the loss, up to the sum indemnified. Article 326(3) of the Civil Code reinforces this logic by establishing legal subrogation in favour of a party who, being liable with or for others for the payment of a debt, discharges it.

Stiglitz (2016) confirms that legal subrogation operates ipso iure upon payment: when the insurer performs its contractual obligation, the law transfers the rights the insured holds against the third party by reason of the loss, the insurer stepping into the insured’s position to the extent of the sum indemnified. Hinestrosa (2007) agrees that the scope of subrogation is legally confined to what has actually been paid by way of indemnity.

There is a natural limitation: the insurer cannot be subrogated against its own insured, here YPFB as an institution, since that would defeat the purpose of the insurance contract. It may, however, be subrogated against other third parties whose conduct contributed causally to the harm. Article 1061 of the Commercial Code further confirms that this limitation, as regards persons in a relationship of dependence with the insured, does not apply where liability arises from wilful misconduct or bad faith — a detail of particular relevance should the investigations establish sabotage or individually attributable gross negligence.

Fernández Gallego (2016), writing from Spanish insurance scholarship, makes an observation that shows the rationale of the system: if the insurer could not recover from those actually responsible what it paid to the victims, the final cost would always fall on the body of policyholders through increased premiums, relieving the negligent official of any financial consequence. The recovery mechanism, whether by subrogation or by recourse, is what sustains the incentive to act diligently and preserves the preventive function of the law of damages.

6. A map of potential responsibility, not an accusation

One of the virtues of the Bolivian system is that it does not fix its gaze on a single responsible party. The SAFCO Act and Article 113(II) of the Constitution are designed to identify whoever, within the chain of public office, contributed causally to the harm, irrespective of rank or media visibility. The exercise therefore moves away from the impulse to single out one figure and towards the finer work of mapping the chain of decisions.

In the fuel episode there are several points at which a legally relevant act or omission may have occurred. At YPFB’s operational level lie the decisions on the quality control of tankers, the receipt of imported product, the validation of samples and the supervision of logistics flows; the official findings on the adulteration of tankers from within make it plausible that ordinary controls were circumvented or relaxed. At the regulatory level, the Agencia Nacional de Hidrocarburos (ANH) holds inspection powers whose alleged non-observance in the timely detection of the anomaly ought to be the subject of an audit. At the level of ministerial oversight, the Ministry of Hydrocarbons — to which Supreme Decree 23318-A assigns a specific role within the control system — holds supervisory responsibilities over the chain of importation, storage and distribution.

Higher up the hierarchy, the civil liability of a public agent does not disappear merely because the post is political in nature or institutionally elevated. Any authority, including the holder of the Presidency of the State, falls within the general regime of the SAFCO Act as regards civil liability. What changes in practice is the evidentiary standard: the greater the distance between the decision and the harmful outcome, the more demanding the proof of causation becomes. Invoking hierarchical position is not enough; it is necessary to identify specific conduct — an instruction, a particular omission, an administrative act, a documented decision — that can be causally linked to the harm.

Here Balbín’s (2021) caution carries weight, recalling Argentine case law (Hisisa, Supreme Court of Argentina, 2008). That decision held that causation must be individualised as clearly and concretely as possible, identifying which activity was specifically irregular, and that reference to a generic sequence of events will not suffice. This requirement matters particularly where the causal chain runs through several institutional levels, as in the fuel case. Gordillo (2014) puts it precisely from the standpoint of Argentine administrative law: the irregular performance of the legal obligations imposed on officials is the determining element for the application of civil liability, whereas regular performance excludes the agent’s personal liability.

The conclusion is deliberately sober. The contaminated fuel case opens a clear scenario of institutional liability for the State, and a possible but individualised scenario of personal liability for those officials whose duly established act or omission contributed causally to the harm. The recourse action lends itself neither to summary judgment nor to generalised indignation; it demands rigorous investigation, a technical opinion from the Comptroller and specific proof.

7. Procedure: no special forum for civil claims

A recurring question is whether civil claims against senior State authorities must be heard by a special jurisdiction. Under the law as it stands, the answer for strictly civil matters is no. Article 184(4) of the Constitution establishes an exclusive forum before the Supreme Court of Justice “for offences committed in the exercise of office”, that is, exclusively criminal. Law No. 044 of 8 October 2010 governs precisely those criminal proceedings. Article 2(I) puts it plainly: the statute regulates the conduct of proceedings for offences committed in the exercise of office against the President and/or the Vice-President of the Plurinational State.

Article 9 of Law 044, under the nomen iuris “Effects of the Sanction”, provides that, in addition to the criminal penalty, those convicted must compensate the State for the civil damage flowing from the offence. That civil liability is therefore ancillary to the criminal conviction and neither exhausts nor excludes the free-standing civil recourse action.

Consequently, the juicio de responsabilidades under Law 044 [proceedings against high officials] and the civil recourse action under Article 113(II) of the Constitution are distinct and independent procedural routes. The criminal trial requires authorisation from the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (Article 161(7) of the Constitution) and adjudication by the full Supreme Court; the civil recourse action requires neither legislative authorisation nor prior criminal proceedings. The two may run in parallel or in succession, but neither is a condition of the other.

Article 50 of Supreme Decree 23318-A is cThis does not mean that, in administrative or procedural terms, prior submission of the opinion is not advisable; the point is that its absence does not formally bar access to the courts.ategorical: civil liability arising from loss to the State capable of monetary valuation “shall be determined by the competent judge”, without establishing any special forum. Neither the Code of Civil Procedure (Law No. 439 of 2013) nor the Judiciary Act (Law No. 025 of 2010) assigns special jurisdiction over civil claims against senior authorities. Ordinary jurisdiction therefore applies: the Public Judge in Civil and Commercial Matters is competent to hear the civil recourse action against any official, as well as the insurer’s subrogation claim.

Cuadros (2018) confirms that this is the solution adopted in most comparative systems. In Italy the civil liability of the State is governed by the Civil Code and disputes are heard by the civil courts; in Germany the competent jurisdiction in State liability disputes is likewise the ordinary civil one, following from the treatment of the State in this field as any other legal person. The applicable regime depends not on the forum but on the system’s substantive rules on reparation.

8. Limitation: an asymmetry designed in the State’s favour

The applicable limitation regime depends on the nature of the action. For the injured individual’s claim against the State or YPFB, Article 1508(I) of the Civil Code applies: three years from the unlawful act; where the act is also a criminal offence, Article 1508(II) provides that the civil claim becomes time-barred at the same time as the criminal action.

For the State’s recourse action against the public servant, by contrast, Article 324 of the Constitution provides that debts arising from financial loss caused to the State are not subject to any limitation period. In Judgment SCP 0790/2012 the Plurinational Constitutional Court recognised this provision as a principle of supra-legal rank.³

For the insurer’s subrogation claim, which is technically not an action “of the State” but of a third party against the person responsible, the ordinary limitation periods apply: five years under Article 1507 of the Civil Code, or three years if the claim is characterised as compensation for an unlawful act under Article 1508(I). Fernández Gallego (2016) offers a useful distinguishing criterion: the dies a quo runs from payment to the injured party in the recourse action, and from the occurrence of the loss in subrogation; in Bolivia this benefits the subrogated insurer, because time begins to run only once the indemnity is established. The author adds a practically relevant point: criminal proceedings interrupt the civil limitation period. Were criminal proceedings to be opened in Bolivia against the officials responsible, that would preserve the insurer’s subrogation claim.

9. What if several parties are responsible? Joint and several liability and the obligation for the whole

Where several responsible parties concur, as would be the case here — operational managers, regulators, ministerial authorities and possibly other senior officials — the amount recoverable is delimited by each party’s causal contribution to the total harm. Article 433 of the Civil Code governs joint and several liability, which allows the creditor to proceed against any of the joint debtors for the whole (Article 437(I)), leaving the responsible parties to apportion the sum among themselves afterwards according to their respective causal contributions. Mosset Iturraspe (1982c) explains that, as between the State (strict liability) and the official (fault-based liability), the victim may claim the whole from either, by virtue of concurrent obligations with the same object but different causes. Tamayo Jaramillo (2007), for his part, develops the notion of the obligation for the whole: in cases where there is no statutory joint and several liability but, in causal terms, each responsible party caused the entirety of the harm, the victim may claim the full amount from any of them. That is precisely the structure of a case such as the adulterated fuel episode.

10. Closing reflection: the system works if its parts work

On paper, the Bolivian legal order has a remarkably sophisticated framework for holding public servants to account for the financial loss their acts or omissions cause the State. The recourse action under Article 113(II) of the Constitution is mandatory, not discretionary. The absence of any limitation period under Article 324 removes the pressure of time. The SAFCO Act applies without distinction of rank. And the absence of a special civil forum keeps the ordinary route open against any official, from the most operational to the most senior.

But the system, like any institutional design, depends on the actors who set it in motion. Establishing individualised causation is legally complex and requires separating the institutional liability of the State (strict) from the personal liability of the official (which requires proof of wilful misconduct or gross negligence). The Contraloría General del Estado, the Procuraduría General del Estado and the Judiciary must act with the technical independence the system presupposes. And public debate must carefully distinguish political responsibility, which is settled in the legislative or electoral arena, from the agent’s personal civil liability, which requires strict proof and is settled before the courts.

In this sense, the contaminated fuel case is a useful reminder. Legally, the point is not to find the culprit in the media sense; it is to identify rigorously which specific officials, at whatever level of the hierarchy, failed to discharge particular duties they were bound to perform, and to apply to them the financial consequences the legal order already provides. Bolivian public liability law does not need deep reform to do its work in this case. It simply needs to be applied.

References

Bolivian legislation

1. Código Civil boliviano [Bolivian Civil Code], enacted by Decree-Law No. 12760 of 6 August 1975 (arts. 57, 324–326, 433–437, 984, 992–993, 1507–1508).
2. Código de Comercio [Commercial Code], enacted by Decree-Law No. 14379 of 25 February 1977 (arts. 1060–1061).
3. Código Procesal Civil [Code of Civil Procedure], Law No. 439 of 19 November 2013.
4. Constitución Política del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia [Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia], enacted on 7 February 2009 (arts. 75, 110–113, 161.7, 184.4, 232, 324, 359, 410).
5. Decreto Supremo No. 23318-A — Reglamento de la Responsabilidad por la Función Pública [Supreme Decree No. 23318-A — Regulation on Liability in Public Office], of 3 November 1992 (arts. 3, 50–58).
6. Ley del Órgano Judicial [Judiciary Act], Law No. 025 of 24 June 2010.
7. Ley No. 044 para el Juzgamiento de la Presidenta o Presidente y/o de la Vicepresidenta o Vicepresidente [Law No. 044 on the Trial of the President and/or the Vice-President], of 8 October 2010 (arts. 1, 2, 9).
8. Ley No. 1178 de Administración y Control Gubernamentales (Ley SAFCO) [Law No. 1178 on Government Administration and Control (SAFCO Act)], of 20 July 1990 (arts. 1.c, 28–35, 43).
9. Ley No. 1883 de Seguros [Insurance Act No. 1883], of 25 June 1998, and its implementing regulation (Supreme Decree No. 25201 of 16 October 1998).
10. Ley No. 3058 de Hidrocarburos [Hydrocarbons Law No. 3058], of 17 May 2005 (art. 14).
11. Ley No. 365 de Seguro de Fianzas para Entidades y Empresas Públicas [Law No. 365 on Surety Insurance for Public Entities and Enterprises], of 23 April 2013 (art. 8).

Case law

1. Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional [Plurinational Constitutional Court], Plurinational Constitutional Judgment 0790/2012, of 20 August 2012.

Scholarship

1. Añez Núñez, R., & Santiago Salame, S. (2017). Comentarios al Código Procesal Constitucional de Bolivia [Commentary on the Constitutional Procedure Code of Bolivia]. El País.
2. Balbín, C. F. (2021). Manual de derecho administrativo [Handbook of administrative law] (5th rev. and enl. ed.). La Ley.
3. Cuadros, O. A. (2018). Responsabilidad por daños y Estado [Liability for damage and the State]. Astrea.
4. Fernández Gallego, M. M. (2016). Responsabilidad civil y entidades aseguradoras: El derecho de repetición en el seguro del automóvil [Civil liability and insurers: The right of recourse in motor insurance]. Bosch Editor.
5. Gil Botero, E. (2020). Tratado de responsabilidad extracontractual del Estado [Treatise on the non-contractual liability of the State] (8th ed.). Tirant lo Blanch.
6. Gil Botero, E., & Rincón Córdoba, J. I. (2016). La responsabilidad patrimonial del servidor público [The pecuniary liability of the public servant]. Universidad Externado de Colombia.
7. Gordillo, A. (2014). Tratado de derecho administrativo y obras selectas: La defensa del usuario y del administrado [Treatise on administrative law and selected works: The protection of the user and of the individual] (Vol. 2). Fundación de Derecho Administrativo.
8. Hinestrosa, F. (2007). Tratado de las obligaciones: Concepto, estructura, vicisitudes [Treatise on obligations: Concept, structure, vicissitudes] (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Universidad Externado de Colombia.
9. Mir Puigpelat, O. (2002). La responsabilidad patrimonial de la administración: Hacia un nuevo sistema [The pecuniary liability of the administration: Towards a new system]. Civitas.
10. Mosset Iturraspe, J. (1982a). Estudios sobre responsabilidad por daños [Studies on liability for damage] (Vol. 4). Rubinzal y Culzoni Editores.
11. Mosset Iturraspe, J. (1982b). Estudios sobre responsabilidad por daños: Fallos anotados y doctrina [Studies on liability for damage: Annotated judgments and scholarship] (Vol. 1). Rubinzal y Culzoni Editores.
12. Mosset Iturraspe, J. (1982c). Estudios sobre responsabilidad por daños: Fallos anotados y doctrina [Studies on liability for damage: Annotated judgments and scholarship] (Vol. 3). Rubinzal y Culzoni Editores.
13. Panisello Martínez, J. (2022). Causalidad e imputación de responsabilidad [Causation and the attribution of liability]. Revista CEFLegal, (256), 35–58.
14. Stiglitz, R. S. (2016). Derecho de seguros [Insurance law] (6th ed., Vol. 2). La Ley.
15. Tamayo Jaramillo, J. (2007). Tratado de responsabilidad civil [Treatise on civil liability] (2nd ed., Vol. 1). Legis.
16. Trigo Represas, F. A., & López Mesa, M. J. (2004). Tratado de la responsabilidad civil: El derecho de daños en la actualidad: teoría y práctica [Treatise on civil liability: The law of damages today: Theory and practice] (Vol. 4). La Ley.

Press sources (contaminated petrol case)

1. Infobae. (2026, 2 March). El Gobierno de Bolivia denunció un sabotaje en la distribución de gasolina y militariza las plantas de YPFB [Bolivian government reports sabotage in petrol distribution and deploys the military at YPFB plants]. Infobae.
2. Infobae. (2026, 6 March). Bolivia: más de 6.500 usuarios solicitaron resarcimiento de daños provocados por la mala calidad de la gasolina [Bolivia: more than 6,500 users have claimed compensation for damage caused by poor-quality petrol]. Infobae.
3. Infobae. (2026, 8 April). La Asamblea Legislativa interpelará al ministro de Hidrocarburos por la mala calidad del combustible en Bolivia [Legislative Assembly to question the Minister of Hydrocarbons over poor fuel quality in Bolivia]. Infobae.

Notes:

1. This does not mean that, in administrative or procedural terms, prior submission of the opinion is not advisable; the point is that its absence does not formally bar access to the courts. ↩︎
2. Hydrocarbons Law No. 3058 of 17 May 2005, art. 14: “The activities of transport, refining, storage and marketing, the distribution of natural gas by pipeline networks, and the supply and distribution of refined petroleum products and of processing plants on the domestic market are public services, which must be provided regularly and continuously in order to meet the energy needs of the population and of industry oriented towards the country’s development.” (Translation provided for convenience; the Spanish text is authoritative.) ↩︎
3. Judgment SCP 0790/2012 recognises Article 324 of the Constitution as a norm-principle of supra-legal rank, which entails the tacit repeal of the former ten-year period under Article 40 of the SAFCO Act as regards loss to State assets. ↩︎