From the Editors of VenEconomy

At a press conference on Thursday, November 19, three financial authorities, Alí Rodríguez Araque, Edgar Hernández Behrens, and Víctor Gil, announced the “open doors” intervention of four banks belonging to the Bolívar Financial Group, whose president is the “revolutionary banker” Ricardo Fernández Barruecos. This intervention includes close monitoring by “watchdogs,” who will supervise the operations at each bank in situ.

With the announcement of the intervention of Bolívar Banco, Canarias Banco Universal, Banpro, and Confederado, the government would seem to have taken the lid off a Pandora’s Box, and there is no knowing what might be pop out.

Some of the reasons for taking this measure against banks belonging to the Bolívar Group mentioned in the Gaceta Oficial of Thursday, November 19, is the irregular granting of different types of financing, including:

1. the allocation of participation certificates for multimillion amounts issued by Inverfactoring C.A., without first notifying and obtaining the prior of the Superintendency of Banks and Other Financial Institutions (Sudeban), as required by the Banking Law;



2. the purchase of participation certificates for multimillion amounts issued by Activos Corporativos AG, C.A. “in the form of a structured note, which constitutes a failure to comply with the current administrative regulation”; and



3. financing granted “to companies belonging to the Ricardo Fernández Barruecos Group by means of overdrafts.”

Even though there is no precedent in Venezuela of simultaneous interventions of this type, for many experts it came as no surprise. For example, Oscar García Mendoza, José Guerra, Orlando Ochoa, and Víctor Olivo denounced weeks ago the phenomenon of the new “bankers” who have been emerging in these “revolutionary” times and who have bought up banks and financial institutions leveraged on public funds.

Ricardo Fernández Barruecos just happens to be one of those emerging bankers, as are Pedro Torres Ciliberto and José Zambrano.

Today, the three groups of “revolutionary bankers” that already exist have attracted the lion’s share of public sector deposits. To cite just one case, Fernández Barruecos’s bank has attracted 11% of the government’s deposits and only 5% of deposits from the general public.

The modus operandi of these bankers is to buy their first bank with financing from state-owned banks (e.g. Bandes, Banco Industrial or BanfoAndes). Then they continue buying up other banks, no longer with direct funding from the State, but with the deposits collected by the first banks they acquired, so forming a chain in which each new bank provides the wherewithal to buy the next one.

Since this modus operandi is forbidden by Sudeban, the intervention of Fernández Barruecos’s banks comes as no surprise. What analysts do find surprising is that this same administrative measure has not also been taken against the Torres Ciliberto and José Zambrano Groups.

It is to be hoped that the financial authorities will make serious efforts to put this jungle of irregularities that are being committed against the financial system in order. What the country certainly does not need is for bank interventions of this type to become part of a struggle for power among the revolutionary titans who it is rumored are backing some bankers.

VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial, political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982.

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