10 de septiembre 2024
AA
The lawsuit filed in a U.S. court by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) against its former executive president, the Honduran Dante Mossi, accuses him of committing five types of crimes. CABEI expects the judge to impose the payment of “compensation for damages in an amount to be proven at trial.”
Although the suit only mentions Nicaragua tangentially, a statement rejecting the filing of the lawsuit, signed by Nicaragua's Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Bruno Gallardo, was made public on September 6. The text was endorsed by Rosario Murillo, Daniel Ortega's wife and vice-president, indicating that they are distancing themselves from the suit and that they do not support the accusations, which they consider “absurd.”
Additionally, Gallardo and Murillo claim they were not consulted and that the lawsuit “is detrimental to the Central American Integration Bank itself.” Using almost the same words as his defenders, Mossi took to X (formerly Twitter) to invite readers to defend “our @BCIE_Org from bad decisions not agreed upon with the Governors!"
A day earlier, on September 5, the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, acting on behalf of CABEI, had filed a 51-page brief in federal court in the District of Columbia, in which it details the alleged crimes committed by the former bank president.
Mossi's initial response was to publish a post on X in which he described the decision of his “colleagues” at CABEI as “incredible.” A subsequent publication on X invites readers to a well-known plaza to see the exhibition of electric cars of the company Cenntro Motors, which is at the center of the lawsuit filed by CABEI.
The brief filed with the Court includes five allegations by CABEI against Dante Mossi: market manipulation, unlawful interference with prospective business relationships, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract, especially confidentiality.
The most serious of the charges is the one that accuses him of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations and Organized Crime Act (RICO). CABEI accuses Mossi of using his position as executive president to promote the arrival in Honduras of a U.S. electromobility company that promotes electric cars, a company with which Mossi allegedly did business after leaving the Bank.
The mentioned company is Cenntro Motors, and is consistent with the point in the lawsuit that “Mossi also committed multiple acts of wire fraud and mail fraud in the course of a fraudulent scheme to misuse the Bank's resources for his own benefit. Once it became clear that his mandate would not be renewed, Mossi undertook to develop a relationship with Cenntro for his own benefit and used CABEI's reputation and funds to accomplish this.”
Doing business with Cenntro
On November 21, 2022, the News section of CABEI's website reported on “the successful conclusion of the Business Forum ‘Introducing Electric Mobility in Central America' organized by the multilateral [the Bank] with the objective of identifying and generating joint business opportunities to boost the production and use of clean forms of transportation in the region."
In addition to several conferences explaining the advantages of this type of transportation, the forum also included the exhibition of vehicles manufactured in the United States by Tesla, General Motors, Navistar, Arcimoto... and Cenntro.
According to the Bank's lawyers, that forum was held because “Mossi pressured CABEI to sponsor” the conference, hoping to benefit Cenntro and deepen his relationship with them. “Mossi also directed the misuse of Bank funds to purchase two electric vehicles from Cenntro,” acts that were "designed to create a lucrative exit opportunity for Mossi as an importer of Cenntro vehicles.”
The lawsuit asserts that Dante Mossi created the company Soluciones de Movilidad Eléctrica de Centroamérica (Solmeca) in February 2024, to distribute and service Cenntro's electric vehicles in Honduras, specifically for the taxi cooperative that services the Tegucigalpa-Palmerola route, as “an agreement that Mossi pursued for himself while still at CABEI under the fraudulent pretext that the Bank would provide financing for the vehicles.”
In a post published on X on the same day that the lawsuit became public, Mossi reported that “The next twelve @CenntroMotors cars are coming to #Honduras via @RepublicaDominicana!”
“To lend credibility to his scheme to defraud CABEI, Mossi set up the deal with Cenntro on the false pretense that the Bank...would finance or subsidize any Cenntro vehicles that taxi collectives agreed to purchase. Mossi allegedly offered a taxi cooperative leader a financial package that fixed the price of electric vehicles at between $23,000 and $26,000, which CABEI would subsidize to reduce the selling price by approximately $5,000,” the lawsuit alleges.
Four other crimes
Among the evidence presented for the other four charges, the lawsuit states that Mossi, knowing that the Bank was preparing to launch a bond offering in dollars, communicated with one of CABEI's business partners at a major investment bank in New York that had previously invested in CABEI bonds, to suggest that CABEI's new executive president was operating the Bank recklessly and without a strategy,” so that ‘they would lose faith in CABEI's institutional solidity.’
Additionally, Mossi allegedly visited credit rating agencies in New York, including Moody's, “with the purpose of damaging the Bank's credit rating and, thus, its ability to operate,” which, if proven, would constitute the crime of market manipulation.
Dante Mossi also allegedly committed the crime of “unlawful interference with prospective business relationships” by attempting to “induce CABEI's established business partners to distance themselves from the Bank through false, misleading, defamatory and/or derogatory statements,” made with full knowledge that they planned to participate in CABEI's efforts, that such participation would benefit the Bank, and that his statements would delay or frustrate such participation.”
The charge of “breach of fiduciary duty” is based on numerous publications on X and LinkedIn, as well as statements and interviews in various media, in which Mossi allegedly disclosed “consciously and intentionally, confidential information of the Bank,” such as dismissals and hiring of personnel, as well as financial information about “alleged CABEI disbursements to member countries.”
The indictment also asserts that Mossi breached his contract and violated the Bank's code of ethics, either by communicating confidential information to persons outside the Bank, by making use for his own benefit of information he knew by reason of his position, or by not respecting the confidentiality he is obliged to keep for ten years from the time he left CABEI.
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
