The Baninter debate continues in paid advertisements in the press. On Monday, lawyers of former president of the defunct Baninter bank, Ramon B?ez Figueroa, reaffirmed their defense of their client with a paid advertisement.
Marino Vinicio Castillo and his sons Juarez and Vinicio respond today in a full-page advertisement to a similar paid advertisement taken out by Banco del Progreso last week. B?ez Figueroa?s legal counsel maintains that Grupo Progreso and Luis Alvarez Renta, the person appointed by them for the financial engineering of the merger between Baninter and Banco del Progreso, were aware of the cancellation of several loans of companies related to B?ez Figueroa and Baninter. The paid advertisement states that the agreement between Grupo Progreso and Luis Alvarez Renta and B?ez dealt with payment of the Baninter shares in the form of cancellation of the loans. The loans that were to be cancelled were:
US$5 million: Editora List?n Diario with Baninter.
US$45 million: Interduty Free and/or Bank Invest with Baninter.
US$5 million: Compa??a Internacional de Petr?leo, Tropigas and related companies, with Baninter.
US$25 million: TV-13 and affiliate stations.
In addition to these, US$20 million worth of shares in AFP Porvenir (the pension plan fund) were to be transferred by Baninter to Ram?n B?ez Figueroa.
Central Bank Governor Jos? Lois Malkum, when revealing the Baninter scandal, had mentioned these payments as being hidden and part of the clandestine operations that led to the merger being aborted.
The defense lawyers claim instead that what led to the failure of a merger of Baninter and Progreso were instead the massive withdrawals, amounting to RD$11 billion, which occurred during the 13 days of interim management of Progreso Group. These withdrawals, they claim, were primarily driven by a campaign of rumors spread by technicians of the Central Bank and the Superintendence of Banks, who were given access to Baninter intelligence. The technicians were supposedly advised to assist in the merger operation, according to the advertisement, but the rumor-making led to an increase in the liabilities of Baninter, which at the time of the merger stood at RD$5.6 billion, and then soared to RD$17 billion, when the Monetary Board aborted the deal.
The lawyers state that the payments effected by Baninter in the days prior to the merger were made with the approval of Pedro Castillo, president of the Grupo Progreso.