Presidential economic advisor Julio Ortega Tous has announced that the monetary authorities are carrying out a full-scale audit of the banks involved in the 2003 economic crisis that forced the Dominican Republic to seek help from the IMF. Ortega called the banking crisis “the product of the former administration’s erratic and poorly handled economic policies, and their violation of the Monetary Law.”
In a breakfast meeting at the Listin Diario newspaper, Ortega Tous said that the authorities would be able to establish just who the criminals responsible for the crisis are.
Ortega, who was joined at the meeting by other members of the President’s economic team including Frederich Berges and Alberto Veloz, insisted that the 2003 crisis could have been avoided if the government had just observed the Monetary Law. Ortega pointed out that the previous monetary officials had given expanded credits to banks that were in trouble. This was done way beyond the limits established by the law. The former officials broke a law that they themselves had made by allowing the Central Bank to pay more than the RD$500,000 limit on each deposit account.