The Miami Herald carries a feature today on the opening of the racketeering trial at the US District Court in Miami on Monday pitching the Dominican state against Dominican mega-millionaire financier Luis Alvarez Renta. The newspaper says that the Miami trial – which is being closely watched in the Dominican Republic where the economy went into a tailspin in 2003 after the $2.2 billion collapse of Banco Intercontinental, known as Baninter – “will serve as a test case for whether a foreign government can successfully use the US courts to bring to justice and recover money from powerful individuals who are involved in foreign banking failures.” In his opening address, Alvarez Renta’s lawyer Richard Smith of Shook, Hardy & Bacon explained that his client had moved the money from Baninter to a company he controlled, Bankinvest, to pay himself and another Florida company he controlled, Wadeville Investment. The Miami Herald reported that Alvarez Renta admitted in the trial that money was transferred to Wadeville, a company that only existed to pay his personal and company bills in the United States.
“There is no testimony that Luis Alvarez Renta or Wadeville stole any money; there is only evidence that Bankinvest did not pay back its corporate loans,” Smith told the jury of four men and four women in defense of his client. The outcome of the case in Miami, is likely to have an effect on the slow-moving ongoing Baninter case in Santo Domingo.
The Miami Herald story mentions that in Santo Domingo a Dominican court ruled last Monday that former Baninter Bank president, Ramon Baez Figueroa, two other former Baninter executives and Alvarez Renta must stand trial for laundering bank assets.
Interestingly, the Miami Herald reports that the judge in charge of the case, US District Judge Jose Martinez, was born in the DR and came to the United States when he was eight years old.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12927910.htm