“No, Ecuador Doesn't Require Bank Permission to Photograph Money”
The claim that Ecuador bans photography of its currency or government buildings without written permission from the central bank is false. No such law exists in Ecuador's monetary, criminal, or administrative codes.
Ecuador's dollarization undermines the claim
Ecuador has used the US dollar as its official currency since 2000. Article 94 of the Código Orgánico Monetario y Financiero provides that all transactions, monetary operations and accounting records in Ecuador are expressed in US dollars, and that the Banco Central del Ecuador (BCE) is 'la única entidad autorizada para proveer y gestionar moneda metálica fraccionaria nacional' — the only body authorised to supply and manage the national fractional coinage. The BCE issues no banknotes at all. Any law purportedly requiring 'central bank permission to photograph currency' would be regulating photography of US Federal Reserve notes, over which Ecuador's BCE has no jurisdiction whatsoever.
The central bank's real mandate says nothing about photography
The BCE's legal mandate is set by Article 27 of the same Code, substituted in 2021 by the Ley Orgánica Reformatoria al Código Orgánico Monetario y Financiero para la Defensa de la Dolarización: the Bank instruments monetary policy 'tendiente a fomentar y mantener un sistema monetario estable, coadyuvar a la estabilidad financiera y administrar su balance con el fin de preservar la integridad de la dolarización, incluyendo el funcionamiento seguro, sólido y eficiente de los sistemas y medios de pago.' Its separate list of functions in Article 36 covers macroeconomic programming, research and statistics, reserve management and financial education. Photography permissions appear in neither article — indeed the word 'fotografía' and its variants appear nowhere in the 254 pages of Book I of the Code.
A real but narrower security restriction
There is a real, narrower restriction in Ecuador: photographing military installations, police stations, and sensitive security facilities is discouraged and can lead to questioning by authorities. This applies to a narrower set of locations than 'government buildings.'
The claim appears to be a fabrication
The specific, colorful claim about 'explicit written permission from the central bank' appears to be a fabrication typical of 'weird laws' listicle content that conflates anti-counterfeiting laws (which prohibit reproducing currency for fraud) with photography restrictions, and then invents a bureaucratic permission mechanism to make the claim sound more official and bizarre.
Where the story gets it wrong
Myth: Ecuador bans photographing currency without central bank permission. Reality: this conflates three separate rules — discouraged photography of military and police facilities for security reasons, standard anti-counterfeiting laws against reproducing currency for fraud, and the fact that Ecuador's central bank mints only fractional coins, not banknotes. None of these amount to a photography-permission law.
- Current status
- Never Enforced
- Penalty
- N/A — no such law exists
- Jurisdiction
- Claimed as national law; no such national law exists