Javier Orti Torres and his not illegal error

Last Tuesday, the now former head of the Real Estate Business Trust BIESS, Javier Orti Torres, resigned after several reports warned about alleged irregularities in the bank’s real estate investments, mainly because they were not approved as the BIESS Law and Banking Board dictate it.

Orti explained that the transfers were to boost the construction sector and build a main trust, Fiaidmi. “It is an instrument that created the Commission on Investment during the time of IESS, which injected $ 200 million.”

Initially this procedure was used for the Fiaidmi to approve investments, however there was a time when both (approval systems) began operating in parallel. “The trouble was that many directors wondered why such issues were approved there, when they were not members of Fiaidmi. Thus the observations arose from the Superintendence of Banks, and the famous discord due to the direct loans (to developers),” he said.

The former member of BIESS explained that the IESS cannot give mortgage loans to anyone, only to its members, this means they can not give loans to businesses. Other comments stressed that the trusts do not have external audits and the audit was just recently delivered and so far there are no results.

He said that the financial manager asked him, seeing that he could not open bank accounts, that it be handled through a personal account (for payment of formalities and procedures). “Maybe I made a reckless mistake there, but not illegal,” Orti said.