This included buying the country’s former president Hipolito Mejia, as well as Leonardo Fernandez bulletproof Lexus sport utility vehicles (Kashian & Drago, 2016). All these expensive gifts would be paid off by the bank. The dishonesty of Figueroa was shown when he used his influence in the bank to award credit card vouchers to his friends, including the $2 million to Colonel Pepe Goico (Latinnews, 2018). Whereas such funds were meant to finance presidential trips for Goico, it was revealed that the money was instead used to make personal purchases including helicopters, as well as luxury housing and jewelry. This irrational issuance of funds to friends strained the bank, and by this, the bank began to …show more content…
The investigation revealed that over the course of time Figueroa and his close allies in the bank had been stealing from the depositors through modifying accounting books to hide their illegal dealings (Latinnews, 2018). It was discovered that about two-thirds of the money depositors had banked had been stolen by Figueroa and his senior officials (Smith, 2003). This massive theft was kept from the government as well as the public eye, using a custom-designed software system that helped keep these funds from being recorded in the official accounting