Luis Alvarez Renta
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Luis Alvarez Renta is a wealthy businessman from the Dominican Republic who was found liable by a federal jury in Miami of civil racketeering and illegal money transfers in a conspiracy to loot Baninter bank during its final months of existence in 2003. Alvarez Renta was ordered to pay $177 million to be paid to the Dominican authorities during November 2005.
[edit] Baninter debacle
Prior to the Baninter banking scandal, Alvarez Renta had accompanied former Dominican President Hipólito Mejía on many of his trips abroad, and was appointed ambassador to France on April 2, 2003. However, after Governor José Lois Malkún of the Banco Central de la República Dominicana's (Central Bank) announcement that Alvarez Renta was involved in the Baninter debacle, Mejía dismissed him from that post by way of Decree 493-03.
In response to the announcement, Alvarez Renta took out full-page advertisements in the press, in which he declares he is innocent of all the charges made by the Central Bank. He also claimed to have ended his dealings with Baninter almost two years before its failure in 2003. Alvarez Renta was the only Dominican businessperson, other than Baninter majority shareholder, Ramón Báez Figueroa, who is mentioned by name in the Central Bank report. The report said that overdrafts and loans totaling RD$3.83 billion were erased at the start of this year in favor of the company Bankinvest, S.A., presided and managed by Luis Alvarez Renta.[1]
[edit] After the Miami verdict
After being found liable in the Miami South District Court during November 2005, Alvarez Renta expressed that he blames former Baninter president Figueroa for the colossal fraud that brought down the bank and all but decimated the Dominican economy in 2003. Alvarez Renta, who has been closely associated with the banking collapse, claimed he had no part in it and that Ramon Baez Figueroa and his deputy Marcos Baez Cocco were those responsible.[2] Proceedings in the Dominican Republic began on April 3, 2006 against Baninter’s ex- president Ramon Báez Figueroa and the executives Vivian Lubrano and Marcos Báez Cocco, Luis Alvarez Renta and Jesus Maria Ferrúa. The defense is headed by the famed attorney Marino Vinicio Castillo, whose primary argument is that the authorities under Mejia’s presidency (2000-2004) caused the bank’s collapse.
On April 7, 2006 the Dominican Government announced it would offer legal and psychological support to former Miss Dominican Republic Carmen Rita Perez Pellerano in her demand that her ex-husband, Alvarez Renta, stop harassing her and that she be awarded custody of their daughter.[3]
[edit] Notes
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