Banco Alas Cooperativo Limitado was a

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 ...

based in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. Inaugurated in 1979, Banco Alas became one of the first to offer ATM services in the country.''Clarín'': Piden la prescripción del caso Banco Alas
The bank prospered initially, growing to include 76 branches, and over 1,200 employees. The collapse of much of the country's banking system on the heels of Argentina's

Central Bank A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central ba ...

Circular 1050, which, in 1980, tied interest rates to the (rapidly increasing) value of the

US dollar The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

locally, as well as the subsequent

Latin American debt crisis The Latin American debt crisis ( es, Crisis de la deuda latinoamericana; pt, Crise da dívida latino-americana) was a financial crisis that originated in the early 1980s (and for some countries starting in the 1970s), often known as ''La Décad ...

, which further stymied credit and the economy, led to the bank's decline. The Central Bank reported in 1986 that it had been defrauded by Banco Alas for US$110 million in export credits; Banco Alas was the 13th largest private bank in the country at the time of its liquidation by the Central Bank. CEO Carmelo Stancato and Executive Vice-president Jorge Gaspar Duchini were convicted on September 9, 1988, of defrauding the Central Bank; as part of the plea bargain with Federal Prosecutor Patricio Evers, a probationary sentence was issued in return for their reimbursement of half the funds. Attorneys for Stancato and Duchini unsuccessfully filed motions in Federal Court in 1997 and 2005 to have ongoing trials against them dismissed on grounds of expiration of statute of limitations.''Clarín'': La Justicia ordenó que siga la causa contra un banco

References

Defunct banks of Argentina Banks established in 1979 Banks disestablished in 1986 Bank fraud {{Argentina-company-stub