Banco Intercontinental
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Banco Intercontinental (or BANINTER) was the second largest privately held
commercial bank A commercial bank is a financial institution which accepts deposits from the public and gives loans for the purposes of consumption and investment to make profit. It can also refer to a bank, or a division of a large bank, which deals with cor ...
in the
Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...
before collapsing in 2003 in a
fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
tied to
political corruption Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain. Forms of corruption vary, but can include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, in ...
.


Ramón Báez Figueroa and expansion of BANINTER

Banco Intercontinental was created in 1986 by Ramón Báez Romano, a businessman and former Industry Minister. Later,
Ramón Báez Figueroa Ramón Buenaventura Báez Figueroa (born in 1956) is the former president of Banco Intercontinental (BANINTER) from the Dominican Republic, accused in 2003 of masterminding the country's most spectacular banking fraud scandal, amounting to more than ...
, took over the bank. BANINTER Group owned Listín Diario; four television stations, a cable television company, and more than 70 radio stations.


Bank crisis

On April 7, 2003, the government took control of BANINTER. Báez Figueroa was arrested on May 15, 2003 along with BANINTER vice presidents Marcos Báez Cocco and Vivian Lubrano de Castillo, the secretary of the Board of Directors, Jesús M. Troncoso, and Luis Alvarez Renta, on charges of
bank fraud Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many ins ...
,
money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
and concealing information from the government as part of a fraud scheme of more than RD$55 billion (US$2.23 billion). The sum was equivalent to two-thirds of the national budget of the Dominican Republic at the time of the event. The resulting central bank bailout spurred a 30% annual inflation and a large increase in poverty. The government was forced to devalue the peso, triggering the collapse of two other banks, and prompting a US$600 million (420 million €) loan package from the International Monetary Fund.https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_bi_ge/dominican_bank_fraud_trial_1 Though required by the country's Monetary Laws to only guarantee individual deposits of up to RD$500,000 Dominican Pesos (about US$21,000 at the time) placed within the country, the Dominican Central Bank (Banco Central Dominicano) opted to guarantee all $2.2B in unbacked BANINTER deposits, regardless of the amount, or whether deposits were in Dominican Pesos or American Dollars and without apparent knowledge whether the deposits were held in the Dominican Republic or in BANINTER's branches in the
Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...
and
Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...
. The subsequent fiscal shortfall resulted in massive inflation (42%) and the devaluation of the DOP by over 100%. Former president Mejía and the Central Bank (Banco Central) stated that the unlimited payouts to depositors were to protect the Dominican banking system from a crisis of confidence and potential chain reaction. However, the overall consequence of the bailout was to reimburse the wealthiest of Dominican depositors, some of whom had received rates of interest as high as 27% annually, at the expense of the majority of poor Dominicans—the latter of whom would be required to pay the cost of the bailout through inflation, currency devaluation, government austerity plans and higher taxes over the coming years.


Aftermath and trial

The banking crisis ignited harsh fights over BANINTER group's media outlets, including the prominent newspaper Listín Diario, which was temporarily seized and run by the Mejía administration following the bank collapse. In 2003, TV commentator Rafael Acevedo, president of the opinion polling firm Gallup Dominicana, had said that in the BANINTER scandal "there has been much complicity at every level of society: the government, the media, the church, the military.".Hurricane Ramoncito: how Ramon Baez and his cronies broke the Dominican Republic's largest bank—and almost brought down the country - Top 100 Banks , Latin Trade , Find Articles at BNET.com
/ref> In November 2005, Alvarez Renta was found liable by a federal jury in
Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
of civil
racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and of ...
and illegal money transfers in a conspiracy to loot BANINTER during its final months of existence. Alvarez Renta was ordered to pay $177 Million to the Dominican state. To this date, he still hasn't paid that sum. The main executives of BANINTER, Báez Figueroa, his cousin Marcos Báez Cocco, Vivian Lubrano, Jesús Troncoso Ferrúa, as well as the aforementioned Alvarez Renta, were prosecuted by the Dominican state for fraud and money laundering, among other criminal charges. Báez Figueroa's main attorney is
Marino Vinicio Castillo Marino Vinicio Castillo Rodríguez (born July 18, 1931), better known as Vincho, is a prominent Dominican lawyer, and controversial figure in Dominican politics. He is the president of the conservative political party National Progressive Force ( ...
, who at the present time holds the position of President Fernandez's Drugs Consultant. With 350 prosecutions and defense witnesses slated to testify, ex- president Hipólito Mejía among them, the criminal proceedings against Báez Figueroa began on April 2, 2006. However, the Court decided to postpone the first hearing for May 19, 2006, accepting a motion by the defense lawyers. It was prompted, as detailed at length in the trial by a scandal involving debt writeoffs and sweetheart loans or other financial deals suspected of having favored leading politicians and others. What remains most curious was that the fraud went undetected for 14 years by the country's supposed financial gatekeepers—the Central Bank, the Superintendent of Banks and U. S. accounting company
PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...
. How Báez Figueroa and his cronies were accused and some convicted of pulling it off provided a glimpse into the gift-giving and favor-swapping common between private business and top government officials in the Dominican Republic. The first trial ended in September 2007.


Sentence and criticism

On October 21, 2007, Báez Figueroa was sentenced by a three-judge panel to 10 years in prison. Additionally, he was ordered to pay restitution and damages totalling RD$63 billion. The laundering charges were excluded, but the other suspected mastermind of the fraud, Luis Alvarez Renta, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering. Marcos Báez Cocco, ex-vicepresident of the Bank, was also found guilty, and sentenced to 8 years. The accusations against two other defendants, former BANINTER executive Vivian Lubrano, as well as the secretary of BANINTER Board of Directors Jesús M. Troncoso, were dismissed for lack of evidence. The sentence has been widely criticized for its severe contradictions, but more specially because it's been alleged that the judges were pressed by "
the powers that be In idiomatic English, "the powers that be" (sometimes initialized as TPTB) is a phrase used to refer to those individuals or groups who collectively hold authority over a particular domain. Within this phrase, the word ''be'' is an archaic vari ...
". Noted journalist Miguel Guerrero wrote in his column of the daily ''El Caribe'' that the defrauders of BANINTER have been protected "by a dark combination of political, economic, mediatic and ecclesiastical powers" and that the sentence was a mamotreto". In fact, Guerrero went to the extent of saying that everything was fixed beforehand, and the defendants and their lawyers knew it, as did those representing the Central Bank.


Court of Appeals and Supreme Court decisions

In February 2008, the case went to the Court of Appeals of Santo Domingo and the Court upheld the sentence against Báez Figueroa, Báez Cocco and Alvarez Renta. The decision that had favored Vivian Lubrano was reverted, and she was sentenced to five years in prison and RD$ 18 billion in damages. Charges against Troncoso Ferrua were definitely dropped. In July 2008, the Dominican Supreme Court confirmed the decision against the defendants. Nevertheless, Lubrano allegedly fell into a "deep depression" and suffered from "panic attacks", and she never went to prison. After much debate, President Leonel Fernández gave her full pardon, on December 22, 2008.Diario Libre
/ref>


References


External links


BANINTER promotion.
{{Authority control Defunct banks Banks of the Dominican Republic Finance fraud Banks disestablished in 2003 Banks established in 1986 1986 establishments in the Dominican Republic