What happens if a company doesn't pay an OSINERGMIN fine?

The final fine is the starting point

It starts when OSINERGMIN — Peru’s regulator for electricity, gas, hydrocarbons, and mining — imposes a fine on a supervised company: a gas station, an electricity distributor, a natural gas company, or a mining operation. While the company can still appeal (to OSINERGMIN itself or to its appeals tribunal, TASTEM), the fine isn’t yet a “closed” debt. The real trouble begins once the administrative route is exhausted: there are no more appeals left to file, and the fine becomes final and enforceable.

The prompt-payment discount disappears if you appeal

OSINERGMIN’s Reglamento de Fiscalización y Sanción (Board Resolution N.° 208-2020-OS/CD) includes a prompt-payment benefit: a 10% discount on the fine amount if the company pays within the deadline set in the sanctioning resolution itself and does not file an administrative appeal. It’s a real strategic choice: paying quickly and not fighting the fine costs 10% less, but it gives up any chance of reversing the sanction.

And if you simply don’t pay?

Here is the gap this guide flags honestly: the current regulation says fines “not paid within the deadline” become subject to coercive collection, but we could not pin down, in the text we reviewed, exactly how many days the company has to pay before that step. An earlier OSINERGMIN resolution (now repealed) mentioned 15 business days, but we can’t state that figure still applies literally today. What is documented is that, sooner or later, an unpaid debt moves into coercive collection.

OSINERGMIN doesn’t run its own separate collection court — it uses Law N.° 26979

Contrary to what some companies assume, OSINERGMIN did not invent its own forced-collection procedure. Article 39.1 of its regulation expressly refers to the consolidated text of Law N.° 26979, the Ley de Procedimiento de Ejecución Coactiva — the same law used by Sunafil, most municipalities, and much of Peru’s public administration to collect non-tax debts. That means OSINERGMIN appoints its own Ejecutor Coactivo and Auxiliar Coactivo (officials formally designated and published in the official gazette, El Peruano), but the rules of the game — deadlines, types of seizure, the debtor company’s rights — are those of that general law.

The seven business days that actually matter

Once the Ejecutor Coactivo opens the file and notifies the company of the Resolución de Ejecución Coactiva (REC), Article 14 of Law N.° 26979 gives the company seven (7) business days to pay voluntarily. If the company pays within those seven days, it avoids seizure. If not, the Ejecutor can order precautionary measures against the company’s assets without first going to a judge.

What the Coercive Enforcement Officer can seize

Article 33 of Law N.° 26979 recognizes four forms of embargo:

• Intervention, over the company’s collections, information, or asset management.
• Deposit or sequestration of goods, at any premises, with the executor able to name the company itself or a third party as custodian.
• Registration of the measure in the Public Registry or another applicable registry (for example, over a vehicle or a property).
• Retention of assets, securities, and funds in checking accounts, deposits, and custody accounts the company holds at banks or other institutions.

In practice, bank account retention tends to be the fastest measure and the one that surprises companies most: the Ejecutor can order the bank to freeze the company’s funds without any further prior notice.

Confiscation of goods is a different tool — don’t confuse it with seizure

Given the industries it regulates — hydrocarbons, gas, electricity, mining — OSINERGMIN has a tool most other agencies don’t: it can order the confiscation or removal of goods, machinery, tanks, or even stored fuel as a safety or precautionary measure during an inspection or while a sanctioning proceeding is ongoing. It’s important not to confuse this with the embargo used in coercive collection: confiscation is triggered by an operational or safety risk detected on-site (a tank in poor condition, for example), not because the company owes money. These are two separate legal tracks, even though both can end up affecting the business’s operations.

Is there an installment plan (fraccionamiento)?

In this review, we did not find, in the official sources consulted, an installment-payment procedure specifically published by OSINERGMIN, unlike Indecopi, which does have a documented process for that purpose. Law N.° 26979 does generally provide that the coercive procedure is suspended if a resolution exists granting deferral or installment payment, which suggests the option could exist case by case, at OSINERGMIN’s discretion, even if it isn’t advertised as a standard procedure. If your company needs this, the safest move is to ask the agency directly or consult a specialized lawyer rather than assume the process works the same way as at Sunat or Indecopi.

Bottom line

If your company has an unpaid OSINERGMIN fine: the administrative route is exhausted first, then (if payment doesn’t arrive within the set deadline) the file goes to the Ejecutor Coactivo, who notifies a Resolución de Ejecución Coactiva giving seven business days to pay before seizure measures are ordered against the company’s accounts, assets, or income — all under Law N.° 26979. Confiscation of goods for safety reasons is a separate chapter entirely. And unlike some other agencies, OSINERGMIN doesn’t appear to have a widely publicized installment-payment option — it’s worth confirming directly rather than assuming it exists.