An IMF team of experts identified the causes of the banking crisis that immersed the country into the critical economic situation it finds itself today. The pundits hired by the IMF to analyze the collapse of three important banks said that an independent Central Bank and Superintendence of Banks, along with a clear definition of these entities according to international financial and banking parameters, are essential elements to avoid a repetition of the economic disaster. The experts blamed all of the supervisory organisms that were meant to be overseeing the nation?s banking authorities: the Superintendent of Banks, the Central Bank and the Monetary Board. The team, some of whose members are former national superintendents of banking in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, found a lack of institutionalism and poor banking practices in both the public and private sectors. The team, according to Hoy, criticized the molly-coddling attitude of the Superintendence at the moment that action should have been taken against those bankers in violation of the banking laws. In part, the poor performance was ascribed to a lack of trained personnel and inadequate equipment, as well as the lack of firmness on the part of the Superintendence. The team also levels its critique at the interference of the Central Bank in areas of supervision, apparently finding much fault with the makeup of the Monetary Board. The experts were not sold on the fact that the Central Bank had not detected the Baninter manipulations in the ?parallel bank system,? when there were daily exchanges with the Chamber of Compensation. The fact that none of the supervisory organisms seemed to have noticed the ostentatious lifestyle of the chief executives of Baninter, the massive publicity campaign and the continual purchase of real estate was also pointed out. The experts do not let the Banking Association off the hook, either. The ABA statement that the crisis only affected the three banks did not sit well with the team and they doubted that the other members were ignorant of the double accounting practices used by the now-collapsed banks. The external auditors were soundly criticized by the IMF team for the way they published the bank statements and the government of Hipolito Mejia and the National Congress also come under fire. In fact, according to Hoy, everything the government did was wrong to some degree, and the slow moving court cases are, for the team, yet another worry.