The National Credit Bank (BNC) of the Nogueroles family has completed the acquisition of the healthy assets from the Financial Group BOD (officially known as Cartera de Inversiones Venezolanas C.A.) this week, amid a chaotic situation facing the latter.
Víctor Vargas Irausquin spent months negotiating with Bancamiga, Sofitasa, and BNC, with the latter ultimately succeeding in finalizing the deal this Friday. The bank, chaired by Jorge Luis Nogueroles García (whose father, Jose María Nogueroles, is the president of the Banking Association of Venezuela), will lend its name to all operations in Venezuela, while only the toxic assets of the conglomerate will remain under the BOD name (which effectively includes all international operations, such as Bancamerica).
Specifically, the situation regarding Bancamerica, which was intervened this month by the Banking Superintendency of the Dominican Republic, has hastened the desperate solution that Vargas has found for BOD. In recent months, the Panama cases and the demands from depositors with funds blocked in Curacao had already put the entity in a precarious situation, but the collapse of the Dominican bank worsened everything.
To dissociate its name from these cases, BNC has negotiated with Vargas (who will keep a smaller share of the new bank) the departure of executives Jesús Escudero Estévez, Yasmir Pineda de Ramos, and Carlos Balilla Battistini. Escudero is linked as the architect of the entire international financial fraud of BOD; Pineda is seen as the visible head of operations in the Dominican Republic (although she reportedly requested her retirement due to an alleged cancer that BNC’s management claims does not exist); and Balilla Battistini is directly associated with banker Alex Saab from Colombia.
The management of Nogueroles senior has been crucial for the operation to receive the approval from SUDEBAN (which will make a statement this week) and other members of the Venezuelan Banking Association. This weekend, the BNC team led by its president, along with Raisa Bortone Alcalá, Jaime Puig Miret, and Andrés Yanes Monteverde, will finalize the last details of the operation directly with Víctor Vargas at the Quinta San Judas of the Caracas Country Club, owned by Vargas.
Weeks ago, it was practically certain that Bancamiga would acquire BOD (an entity close to the power group of Samark López and Tareck El Aissami), but the operation was stalled when Vargas found a better alternative with BNC.
This isn’t BNC’s first time buying a distressed bank at a bargain price, they previously did the same with Stanford Bank. Also, recently, they acquired Citibank’s operations in Venezuela.