Making up stories
Point of View By Veneconomy
On October 28 last, the company Capital Investment Services, with headquarters
in Florida, USA, tried to place a bond issue from the Central Bank of Venezuela
valued at $185 million, paying interest at 13%, and maturing in 2018. A few
hours after the information appeared on the electronic screens, the Central
Bank of Venezuela requested that the operation be suspended, as it had not been
authorized by the bank.
However, the president of Capital Investment Services insists that it did have
the order to place the issue and that it had met with an officer of the Central
Bank by the name of David Contreras and with others on the 12th floor of the
bank, where the operation was agreed. And although the documents that it has
in its possession show the signatures of both the Central Bank’s legal
advisor and its deputy advisor for financial affairs, the Central Bank maintains
that they are forgeries. As for Contreras, he simply does not work at the BCV
and no one knows who he is.
The alarm bells went off immediately. The fraud was prevented thanks to the
timely intervention of the BCV. It is obvious that “Contreras” has
or had contacts at the Central Bank, otherwise it would have been impossible
for the meeting with the U.S. agents to be held at the BCV’s headquarters
in Venezuela.
Everything points to a fraud attempted by certain individuals who wanted to
be too clever by half and who, more than likely, planned to swindle the U.S.
company. Now, the Venezuelan authorities are investigating four people who,
it is reported, tried to cash in bonds whose certificates matched the papers
offered in the prospectus distributed by Capital Investment Services for dollars.
This is a mystery that still has many questions that need answering and one
that has those with an inquisitive turn of mind enthralled, including VenEconomy.
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