A multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been filed in Miami against Venezuelan banker David Osío, owner of Davos International Bank, a financial conglomerate that has maintained ties with Pdvsa.
According to Miamidiario.com, the lawsuit was introduced by former partners and also Venezuelan bankers Rodrigo Fernández and Andrés Sotillo, who accuse Osío of failing to pay them profits while they were partners.
“In the lawsuit filed in the Miami-Dade County court, Fernández and Sotillo allege that they partnered with Osío in the mid-90s and invested their money and many years of hard work into establishing Davos Financial Group. However, their efforts were undermined by alleged illegal actions from their supposed Venezuelan partner,” states MiamiDiario.com, citing the lawsuit.
Attorney Michael Díaz from the law firm Díaz, Reus & Targ LLP in Miami, representing the defendants, told the Miami newspaper that “Osío transferred the company’s assets to a trust in a tax haven and altered the status and value of the company’s assets without notifying the partners,” Díaz assured.
No immediate response was obtained from David Osío regarding the lawsuit, but it is known that the banker denies the allegations and will face the claims in court.
The bank where Osío is president, Davos International Bank, has been linked in a federal investigation as a recipient of over $5 million in alleged commissions paid to a high-ranking Pdvsa executive, Juan Montes, by the Venezuelan financier Francisco Illarramendi‘s conglomerate.
Montes is accused of authorizing “the disbursement of several tens of millions of dollars from the Pdvsa pension fund to be managed by Illarramendi’s group of companies, which is currently detained under accusations of committing a Ponzi-type fraud, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses.”