Florida banks part of lawsuit involving Dominican financier
The suit, which invokes the Patriot Act, is the first step in aworldwide effort torecover more than $2-billion from the collapse of Banco Intercontinental.
By DAVID ADAMS
Published March 30, 2004
MIAMI - Lawyers in Miami have filed a $34-million racketeering lawsuit against an influential former diplomat and financier from the Dominican Republic, Luis Alvarez Renta, as part of a worldwide effort to recover more than $2-billion in one of the largest bank frauds in history.
A jet-setting financial and political consultant to the Caribbean's rich and famous, Alvarez Renta was the Dominican Republic's ambassador in Paris until he was arrested last year for his alleged role in the stunning collapse of Banco Intercontinental, known as Baninter.
The Baninter scandal put such a huge hole in the nation's finances that its currency suffered close to a 300 percent devaluation.
The Dominican government also was obliged to negotiate a $300-million World Bank loan in its efforts to repay defrauded account holders.
Several of the bank's top officials, including president Ramon Baez Figueroa, a member of one of the country's most prominent political families, were arrested and jailed. However, most have since been released while awaiting trial.
Alvarez Renta - a nephew of the New York fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and a dual U.S. and Dominican citizen - is accused by attorneys for the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic of looting funds from Baninter using two Florida companies to launder the money through Florida banks.
Alvarez Renta, who keeps a home in Coral Gables, faces bank fraud and money laundering charges in the Dominican Republic related to the Baninter case. He was one of those arrested last year but later freed on medical grounds.
An attorney for Alvarez Renta denied the charges and suggested that the lawsuit presented "an interesting theory" but had a number of important facts wrong.
Among those was the alleged relationship between the offending companies and Alvarez Renta, who according to his Miami lawyer, A.J. Barranco, is "a business genius" and "certainly not a co-conspirator or mastermind in the plundering of a bank."
The lawsuit, filed by the law firm of Tew Cardenas, which seeks triple damages of $102-million from Alvarez Renta, alleges that he hid the stolen money in Florida bank accounts and real estate.
Although the banks involved - BankAtlantic, the International Bank of Miami and Hamilton Bank - are not directly charged in the lawsuit, the alleged fraud "compromised Miami banks and professionals who assisted in this illegal activity," it claims.
If they are unable to document proper "due diligence" in their handling of the transactions, the banks could face prosecution under tough new measures in the October 2001 Patriot Act related to offshore banks, according to experts on money laundering.
The lawsuit is based on an allegedly suspicious pattern of financial activity between Baninter and the Miami banks, involving numerous unguaranteed loans to Miami companies allegedly controlled by Alvarez Renta that were paid off by secret accounting practices at Baninter.
"This is the initial step in a worldwide search," said C. Thomas Tew, the Miami attorney for the Dominican Central Bank's liquidating commission.
The law firm already has filed charges in the Cayman Islands related to the purchase and sale of a $19-million yacht, the Patricia, owned by Baez Figueroa and named after his wife.
