A violent and mysterious death added to a hundreds of millions of dollars scam that led to the bankruptcy of a bank in Bolivia. On Saturday night, the liquidator of Bolivian bank Fassil, Carlos Colodro, was found dead on a street in the eastern city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, after allegedly falling 14 floors from his office in one of the bank’s buildings where he was temporarily staying . The police’s main hypothesis is suicide, but there are other theories about the incident as his role as controller of the bank in liquidation harmed powerful business interests.
The autopsy revealed he died of “multiple trauma and traumatic shock,” Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo told a news conference. The lawyer for the deceased’s family, Jorge Valda, revealed that the body had neither an eyeball nor a testicle and “didn’t rule out” that he might have been murdered. “There were stab wounds on the arms, back and all over the body,” he told the media. He explained that on Saturday, Mother’s Day in Bolivia, Colodro had lunch with his family, with whom he had a “normal conversation”, and that around five in the afternoon he arrived at the building his mother was in front of work gone found. corpse hours later.
A suicide note that Colodro allegedly wrote was partially leaked on social media. “An appropriate expert opinion must be carried out to confirm the veracity and the alleged motives that led him to sign the letter,” Minister Castillo told the press. The officer promised that all necessary investigations would be carried out to clarify the incident. The handwritten letter reads, “They betrayed me, they turned their backs on me, they killed me.” It’s time to tell this hell enough that since April 26 (the day when he was appointed bank controller), a month that feels like 100 years of suffering. He later hints that he made the decision that he didn’t want anyone to think about “cowardice”.
We send our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Brother Carlos Alberto Colodro, who served as Director of Banco Fassil.
We are dismayed at his death and call for an immediate investigation into the causes of this matter. pic.twitter.com/HfUbJhBuYJ— Luis Alberto Arce Catacora (Lucho Arce) (@LuchoXBolivia) May 28, 2023
Carlos Colodro had a long career at the Central Bank of Bolivia and in banking supervision. Fassil’s intervention represented his greatest professional challenge given the bank’s size, the fourth largest bank in the country and the controversial cause of its bankruptcy just over a month ago. After his appointment, it was revealed that the Santa Cruz Financial Group, owner of Fassil, had loaned money from the bank to various Santa Cruz businessmen and, in return, had demanded bribes from them equal to a percentage of the loan (usually five million dollars) paid on theirs accounts. , ostensibly for “real estate investments.” In some cases, small amounts of bank shares were bought with this money.
A journalist who covered the case announces that he is leaving the country
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Among Fassil’s shareholders was the company Santa Cruz Inversiones en Bienes Raíces (SIBRA), which became one of the main operators of the municipal market in the capital, Santa Cruz. It is alleged that both SIBRA and the bank itself bought properties with depositors’ money in exchange for inflated prices and bribes. The financial gap would be over $600 million, which would have to be covered by the savings insurance created by the country for these cases. Some key Santa Cruz businessmen were involved in these operations. At the same time, the bank’s group of owners includes some of the most important families in this region, which is one of the wealthiest in Bolivia.
The journalist Junior Arias, who made most of the revelations on this case, announced on his social networks that he had decided “to leave the country for a while until the death of the Fassil controller is clarified”. And he added: “Like many people, I don’t believe that he committed suicide, but that he did his job in relation to this case and may have found out more than we know so far.”
The news shocked the country and sparked a flurry of speculation about what really happened to Carlos Colodro. President Luis Arce expressed his condolences to his family on Twitter. “We call for an immediate investigation into the causes of this state of affairs,” he wrote.
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