Peravia gets three years in prison in Florida court
While the local case by failed Banco Peravia deposits for fraud of over RD$1.4 billion has stalled in the courts here in the Dominican Republic, international media have carried the news that a former owner of the bank, 50-year old Venezuelan Gabriel Arturo Jimenez Aray, was sentenced on Thursday, 30 November 2018 for his participation in a major money-laundering scheme. In addition to the three-year jail sentence, Jimenez agreed to forfeit US$38 million.
The court established that the Venezuelan and other partners purchased the bank in Santo Domingo to help launder money and use it to pay bribes to Venezuelan government officials in exchange for contracts to conduct currency-exchange schemes and to launder the money gained from running those schemes.
Jimenez admitted to having facilitated illegal transactions and bribe payments to foreign officials and others via bank issued credit cards, cash disbursements, wire transfers and other financial transactions.
Jimenez, who resides in Chicago, had already pled guilty last 20 March 2018 to a charge of conspiracy to commit money-laundering after reaching a plea bargain, in which Raul Gorrin Belisario, the owner and president of the Venezuelan TV channel Globovision, was also involved and is fugitive of US justice on charges of foreign bribery and money laundering through US banks and real estate.
Last Tuesday, 27 November 2018, Alejandro Andrade, the former treasurer in the administration of the late Hugo Chavez, was also sentenced to 10 years in jail for his implication in this multi-million dollar case. When he pled guilty in December 2017, Andrade admitted that he had received more than more than $1 billion from Gorrin and other persons implicated in the case in exchange for using his position as National Treasurer to allow them to carry out currency exchanges at favorable rates according to the prosecutor. As part of his plea deal, Andrade accepted the seizure of US$1 billion together with all the assets involved in the corruption scheme, including real estate, vehicles, horses, watches, airplanes and bank accounts.
Read more:
US Justice
Diario Libre
El Nacional
Listin Diario
3 December 2018
