The representatives of the Baeremaecker and Perera stockbroker company will present an extension of the lawsuit against an employee whom they accuse of having defrauded more than twenty clients. In this new extension they will include the daughter of the accused. “We were able to prove an active participation of your daughter in the fraud”Jorge Díaz, a former court prosecutor and company lawyer, told The Observer.
In the brief that they will present imminently, the representatives of the firm describe that they detected a case of a client who was missing US$31,000 from his account. He had deposited exactly that sum on April 17 and on the 20th of that month the worker denounced for fraud transferred the money to her daughter’s account, who withdrew the money that same day. “They took US$31,000 in a handrail,” Diaz summed up. From this they determine that he had “active participation”.
The employee, who according to the stock brokerage firm was a introducing broker, He collected the commissions of his legal businesses through his daughter’s account, the lawyer clarified.
Beyond this extension, Díaz pointed out that “there are other account maneuvers that she emptied, and to which she continued to pay interest, in a book ponzi scheme, so that people did not withdraw the money. If what happened does not happen, it is that someone wants to withdraw the money that he thinks he has and realizes that he is not there, “he added.
In addition, he maintained that there is a group of complainants whom Baeremaecker and Perera did not have registered as clients. “They contacted her, made them believe that they deposited her money, they thought they were clients and they were not. She falsified the documentation such as making the deposit, paying them dividends, sending them false account statements, but those people claimed to be Baeremaecker and Perera clients they had no idea, “he added.
As reported The Observerthe prosecutor for Economic and Complex Crimes, Gilberto Rodríguez, summoned an interdisciplinary group to advise him. It will be made up of two officers from the Financial Crimes case (one of them follows the line of common crime and the other the line of money laundering, which implies knowing which crime was committed before because money laundering must have a prior offence) and members of the Unit of Information and Financial Analysis (UIAF), National Secretariat for the Fight against Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (Senaclaft), Social Security Bank (BPS), General Tax Directorate (DGI), the same Prosecutor’s Office.
How did the scam occur and how did you circumvent controls?
Although the “unfaithful employee” had been working at Baeremaecker and Perera for 16 years, the stockbrokers stated in a statement that she was not an employee but was officiating introducing broker. In the world of finance, that figure describes the intermediary who refers clients to a brokerage company, with whom he signs a contract. Although the company is the one who operates the account, the profits are divided. Lawyer Carlos Balbi, who defends the accused, told The Observer that she was an employee of the company from which she received salary, vacation salary and set hours.
According to the complaint filed by the lawyers Jorge Díaz and Leonardo Costa —and disclosed by El País—, the employee kept the investors’ money in different ways.
For example, they pointed out that he was withdrawing money (in cash or checks) without an order from the savers or signed receipts. Also that he had put together a kind of “carousel” in which, for example, when she had to deposit a company check to pay a client in another country, she would withdraw the money and settle debts with Uruguayan clients who were waiting for the interest from the investment they had made.
On the other hand, they maintained that there were clients who made deposits in the account of an exchange —which functioned as an intermediary between Baeremaecker and Perera and their clients— but that never reached the account of the stockbrokers. On some occasions, according to the complaint, the involved received checks and bills of exchange from clients but, instead of entering them into the company’s coffers, she cashed them for her in exchange for her.
In turn, —according to Díaz and Costa— the woman withdrew money from transfers that were made from the Central Bank to the exchange account, but in the name of brokerage clients.
The version of the “cheating employee”
Lawyer Carlos Balbi —sponsor of the employee whom the company accuses of being unfaithful— told The Observer that his client was a dependent employee of the company and not an external broker (agent that brings clients closer to stockbrokers) as they stated in their lawsuit. “She received salary, vacation salary, set hours, every day she went to work at the office. She was subject to orders and directives (…) As she was a bank retiree, was in black“, he pointed.
In a statement issued by the brokerage firm, she was described as “a person who referred clients” to the organization.
In addition, his version is that he never handled money, but rather gave the order to the Accounting Department and they were the ones who handled it. The lawyer stressed that the company was subject to checks and audits.
