As the dust settles in the dubious lawsuit against Banco Venezolano de Credito led by proxies of the Venezuelan regime (Derwick Associates), it’s important to reveal some of the participants in this malicious spectacle.
Frank Holder
FTI Consulting deserves notable attention. This publicly traded company specializes in various fields, including PR management. Recently, this “PR management” firm instructed its employee, Maria Jose Tobar, to contact me to discover my workplace, presumably so that I could be served. Once I exposed FTI’s ridiculous attempt, Maria Jose Tobar deleted her LinkedIn account. However, FTI Consulting has been offering similar “PR management” and consultancy services to some of the most notorious figures from Chavez’s Venezuela: Rafael Sarria, Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco, Moris Beracha, Alejandro Andrade, David Osio, and the two fools leading Derwick Associates, Alejandro Betancourt Lopez and Pedro Trebbau Lopez. The common thread among these individuals seems to be Frank Holder of FTI.
Holder “began his career with the U.S. Air Force as a political-military analyst for the U.S. embassy in Argentina and as a special agent for the Office of Special Investigations at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.” His early experience in Argentina involved establishing a risk assessment business called Buenos Aires Sistemas Inteligentes along with Luis Moreno Ocampo, who accused Holder of stealing data from his office. Later, Holder founded Holder Associates, which he sold to Kroll, turning into Kroll’s representative in Argentina. In 2000, Holder was convicted of false claims and fraud. He was also accused of extortion by former Governor of Entre Rios province, Jorge Busti. In 2001, Holder created an “intelligence report” regarding Argentinean congressmen Gustavo Gutiérrez and Carlos Balter, which was deemed unfounded by Judge Raul Sanchez; it was commissioned and paid for by banker Raul Moneta, solely to discredit the two congressmen. Additionally, Holder launched Holder International, another intelligence firm that FTI Consulting acquired for $9 million in 2007.
Holder’s name resurfaced in Brazil in connection with a scandal involving Daniel Dantas and a report about secret accounts allegedly held offshore by leaders of Partido dos Trabalhadores, including Lula da Silva and Jose Dirceu. Dantas was trying to leverage this report to blackmail Lula and associates. Holder authored the report, initially claiming to have acquired the information during Kroll’s investigation into Italy’s Parmalat’s bankruptcy. However, Brazil’s Veja magazine discovered through Milan authorities that Holder’s narrative was false. Confronted by Veja, Holder later admitted that hackers working for the corrupt former Argentine Interior Minister Jose Luis Manzano “obtained the information,” which Manzano provided to him as “a personal favor.” Due to his connections with the disgraced Brazilian banker Dantas, who paid him $838,000, Holder faced slander accusations (similar to his earlier fabrications in Argentina).
Aside from being a hired pen and a storyteller, FTI Consulting’s Latin American director, Frank Holder, is labeled as an “expert” in “risk management… money laundering… forensic and litigation practice” and, believe it or not, “fraud and public corruption investigations…” Holder is currently being sued in Florida for $6 million by Matias Garfunkel, another Latino ‘businessman’ embroiled in yet another grand corruption scheme in Argentina. In an effort to acquire a controlling stake in Telecom Argentina’s shares, Garfunkel tried to use two letters [see here, and here] from two Venezuelan banks owned by [guess who?] Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco, who is yet another client of Holder and FTI Consulting. Did Fernandez Barrueco knowingly partake in this, or is it just another demonstration of Holder’s reckless behavior?
But it gets even more interesting; Holder was also employed by Hugo Carvajal, an OFAC designated kingpin identified by the U.S. Treasury for his support of the FARC, Colombia’s narco-terrorist cartel. As if that wasn’t enough, former CIA agent Holder also acted as a proxy for Rafael Sarria in at least two Florida-registered firms [SAI Advisors Inc. link, and Noor Plantation Investments link] utilized to launder money via real estate acquisitions. Consequently, Holder, along with FTI Consulting, has been involved in, at minimum, money laundering, racketeering, and facilitating wanted criminals. Starting out as a government employee, is he a double agent or simply profiting from criminal enterprises in Latin America? While FTI Consulting and Holder blatantly preach about FCPA compliance, when will federal authorities begin scrutinizing their activities in Latin America?