Citadel Casa de Valores: a ''parallel treasury'' was discovered in the Stock Exchange Decevale

Forensic audit reveals that there was a conspiracy headed by Jorge Chérrez. Citadel Casa de Valores is mentioned in E&Y's report.

Citadel Casa de Valores: a ''parallel treasury'' was discovered in the Stock Exchange Decevale
Photo by Yiorgos Ntrahas / Unsplash

Several details of ISSPOL's portfolio are revealed with the forensic audit carried out by Ernest & Young (E&Y), a prestigious firm that served as a basis for the Guayaquil Stock Exchange (BVG) to dismiss with approval Oriana Rumbea Thomas, former manager of the BVG and Decevale (Centralized Deposit of Clearing and Settlement of Securities), now demonstrates the existence of a "parallel treasury".

E&Y points out that it analyzed Rumbea's emails, which show that the operations proceeded in the Decevale with Citadel, of Xavier Neira Salazar, her husband, were ordered by one of the Wolves of the Creole Wall Street: Jorge, 'el Mago' Chérrez, who has managed a multimillionaire portfolio of the Institute of Social Security of the Police (Isspol). The amount is close to USD 550 million, without the policing entity currently recovering its money.

In several appearances of the Prosecutor's Office of some of the people involved in these transactions, some former Isspol executives have distanced themselves from their responsibility as administrators, there is an inescapable relationship between Citadel and the Police Insurance and Decevale, where the representatives for many years were the same administrators of the Guayaquil Stock Exchange.

According to the newspaper Expreso "cannot reveal details of these appearances because they are in the process of preliminary investigation. The process is moving forward and 12 new prosecutors have been incorporated to speed up the processes".

The forensic audit was delivered last January 21 and evidence that Luis Álvarez Villamar (from the operative area of Decevale) - "the BVG liquidated it but nobody knows who authorized it-, and Gonzalo Navarro Macías "acted jointly in a fraudulent manner" with Chérrez to "project a false custody of Decevale".

The intervening agency of the Superintendence of Companies in the centralized deposit of securities also revealed unpermitted operations. The rights and securities traded by Chérrez's companies, among them IBcorp, with Isspol "were in fact under the real control of Chérrez himself or of his companies".

According to the newspaper, in addition to Citadel, Isspol and Jorge Chérrez, the securities firm Picaval, from Quito, participated in the transactions of the global deposit notes.

"Rumbea knew and consented to the actions with Álvarez, Navarro, and Chérrez, using his high position in the BVG. Messages between Álvarez, Chérrez, and Rumbea were found in the institutional mailbox assigned to her; the three agreed on the terms of the answers to possible questions from the press and authorities about Decevale's role in the Isspol affair."

There was a long-standing family deal. Between July 8 and July 14, 2015, Chérrez and Neira. At that level, it is revealed that Neira was the one who got Isspol to sell those internal debt bonds and was proposing to Neira that it should be Citadel that formally represented Isspol in the sale. And that is exactly what happened. In addition, he asked Neira to get a legal opinion that Decevale was authorized to receive Ecuadorian Government securities traded in local and international stock markets. This email was forwarded by Neira to Rumbea and then he sent him the text of the opinion that Decevale could give.

In the Ernest & Young report are the names of two companies, a Panamanian company, Forban Holding, and an Ecuadorian company very active in the stock market, Enlit (Envases del Litoral). Between 2014 and 2020 this company made 8 bond issues. And between 2016 and 2021 four issues of commercial paper. In total, 62 million were issued.

According to the Panamanian company registry, the president of Forban is Xavier Neira Salazar, and the directors are his father and former leader of the Social Christian Party (PSC), Xavier Neira Menéndez, María Salazar Robles de Neira and María Auxiliadora Neira de González.