Who are Roberto and William Isaias?
Ecuadornews:
The recent news that the United States has denied a deportation order for Ecuadorian brothers Roberto and William Isaías Dassum, 74 and 75 years old former bankers, accused of embezzlement for the banking holiday and against whom an extradition order weighs, motivates many young people to wonder about that part of the history of 20 years ago in Ecuador.
Judge Kathleen Williams of the Federal Circuit of Florida denied, “for the time being”, the deportation of her clients, defender Jorge Zavala Egas said from Ecuador. He added that the magistrate ordered that the case be dealt with by a competent immigration judge with the option of granting them bail.
The American newspaper Nuevo Herald consulted with Immigration lawyer John De la Vega, not related to the case of the Isaias, about how long to take the process for possible deportation, who commented that on average, it takes between 12 and 14 months if the person is not detained.
If the immigrant is in custody and denied bail, the deportation procedure could take three to four months.
In Ecuador, the Isaías were sentenced in 2015 to eight years in prison for the crime of bank embezzlement in the Filanbanco bankruptcy.
Where does their fortune come from?
The fortune of the Isaias family arose from the work started by his grandfather in Ecuador over 100 years ago where he emigrated. William and Roberto are part of this clan that was forged by the pulse of the patriarch and his children over 80 years. With 19 years of age and in search of fortune in America, arrived in Guayaquil in 1912 Emilio Isaías Abi-Hanna, from Lebanon. It was part of a wave of migration that came to the country fleeing political persecution and poverty.
Emilio Isaías was dedicated to the commerce, fixing his center of operations in Catarama (Los Rios). From there and then from Guayaquil, with the help of his children, the Isaías Barquet: Julieta, América, Juan, Estéfano, Pedro, Alfredo, Nahím and Enrique Emilio, expanded their local and international businesses with the firm Emilio Isaías Compañía de Comercio (EICA) and San Vicente textiles.
Only at the end of the 1950s, with the purchase of the total shares of La Filantrópica bank, the business center changed to banking, a platform that allowed it to consolidate in the industrial sector.
At the death of the first Isaiah, in 1971, the most visible fortune remained in the hands of his sons Juan and Nahím. The first with the branch of textiles, and the second, with the financial business.
Filanbanco
Nahím Isaías died in a military incursion to rescue him from the kidnapping of the guerrilla group Alfaro Vive Carajo, in the regime of León Febres Cordero, in 1985. The bank, which was renamed Filanbanco, remained in the hands of the Isaías Dassum: Roberto and William, who in turn expanded into telecommunications with five television channels, three newspapers, five magazines and five radio stations. On television they owned the TC channel, Cable TV and Satelcom, which in the early 2000s passed into the hands of the State.
In 2008, in the presidential regime of Rafael Correa, the Deposit Guarantee Agency (AGD) took under its administration around 900 assets, which were later transferred to the Management and Execution Unit of Public Law of the AGD-CFN Trust No More Impunity (UGEDEP).
The bank was ceded in 1998 to the Ecuadorian State by its owners due to the liquidity crisis it faced, economic mismanagement and unprofitable investments and even natural disasters such as the “El Niño Phenomenon” in 1997 and the restrictions of banks international banks to cede loans.
In 2008, newspaper EL UNIVERSO investigated that in Panama and the United States they had some companies. Precisely the main shareholder of Filanbanco S.A. in 1998 it was Intral Panama, based in that country.
According to the database of the Mercantile Registry of Panama, there are twelve companies in which Roberto Isaías or William Isaías appear as directors, alone or with other people. According to the Panamanian law, quite flexible in this aspect, any person can create companies there, without even being a resident, and to record how their manager does not mean that they are necessarily shareholders. In addition, the billing or tax information is not public.
Some Panamanian companies are Grupo TV Cable, CSN Cable News, RSL Telecom, Ecualeasing, Financiera Merkesa. Of the twelve, ten date from before Filanbanco passed into the hands of the State.
While in Miami, where they are based since 2000, there are 19 companies active in their name. Among them Spanish Cable Network, Batan Miami Corp., Pacific Condos, Somos TV, Wreal.
Ten of them were created before 1998 and some date back to the 1960s, when the empire they would become a part of was still being formed.
Donations in the United States In 2014, the di The New York Times reported that the Isaiah brothers made several hundred-thousand-dollar contributions to the campaign to President Barack Obama and more than a dozen members of Congress. It is detailed that a year after his family donated $ 90,000 to help re-elect Obama, the US government rejected Ecuador’s extradition request for the Isaias brothers, which led to accusations that these donations were helping to keep to the brothers and their families safe in US territory. (I)