Miami Bank Shareholders Claim $27M Loss Due to Venezuelan Government Control
America ı By Rochdi Rais
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"Mr. Juan Santaella has been obsessed with only one thing: getting back control of Eastern National Bank," Davidson said.
Davidson explained that this began during the Venezuelan financial crisis of 1994, when several banks failed and were taken over by the government. The Venezuelan equivalent of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. stepped in to protect the deposits of Bancor, which was a bank at the time, and to remove Santaella, according to Davidson.
Bancor's parent company was Corpofin, which also owned Mercorp NV, which in turn owns the majority of shares in Eastern National Bank. Rodriguez was appointed by the Venezuelan government to oversee Corpofin and took control of Mercorp as well, according to Davidson.
"She's a private lawyer at this point, but she's been appointed as an overseer of this company, not to profit from it, but to make sure it is running correctly and doing the right thing," Davidson said.
He said his team will prove that Rodriguez and the other board members never received any extra compensation and that they reasonably believed their business judgments were in the best interests of Eastern National Bank.
The trial resumes on Monday morning with testimony from the first witnesses.
Bancor and Franeker filed the suit against the bank's leadership in January 2022, claiming the directors allowed the bank to sidestep U.S. penalties in order to benefit the Venezuelan government.
The case has been marked by strife between counsel representing the warring parties, with Diaz Reus & Targ LLP attorney Michael Diaz being disqualified in April 2023 after a magistrate judge determined that he had an attorney-client relationship with the bank's beneficial owner between 1996 and 1998.
The directors hit back with their own disqualification bid against plaintiffs' counsel León Cosgrove Jiménez LLP over alleged misuse of privileged documents, but that request was denied.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles denied a bid by the plaintiffs to sanction Diaz Reus lawyers over allegations that they delayed an October 2023 trial date.
Bancor and Stichting Particulier are represented by Derek E. León, Diego Pérez Ara, and Gregory S. Carter of León Cosgrove Jiménez LLP.
The board of directors is represented by Gary E. Davidson, Evan J. Stroman, Brant C. Hadaway, Javier Coronado, and Ibrahim Amir of Diaz Reus LLP.
The case is Bancor Group Inc. v. Rodriguez et al., case number 1:22-cv-20201, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
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