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of the A.M. Costa Rica staff Osvaldo Villalobos Camacho has been arrested in San José and jailed. He is the brother of Luis Enrique Villalobos Camacho. Both are businessmen who have been involved in paying 2.8 to 3 percent interest to a primarily foreign and North American clientele. Osvaldo Villalobos was taken into custody at 8 a.m. when he showed up for a court hearing. The prosecutor has asked for a year of pre-trial detention, and Osvaldo Villalobos was jailed until a judge makes a decision later today on the request. |
A spokesperson for the Poder Judicial
said the charges were fraud and acting illegally as a financial intermediary.
Investigators are believed to be seeking Luis Enrique Villalobos Camacho, but he had not been located today. The action was requested by Walter Espinoza Espinoza, the fiscal in charge of prosecuting narcotrafficking cases, said the spokesperson. Osvaldo has been operating Ofinter S.A., a money exchange house with a principal office in Mall San Pedro. Luis Enrique Villalobos ran his personal loan business nearby. Both closed their doors Oct. 14. Investigators raided both offices and even Osvaldo’s home July 4. |
A.M. Costa Rica photo
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About 200 mostly foreign residents rallied Tuesday morning in the San José court complex. They were successful in getting attention from the Spanish language press and television. But it appears they failed to accomplish their main goal: to encourage a judge to unfreeze investment money held by Luis Enrique Villalobos Camacho. One investor, called "highly credible" by demonstration organizers, said he had been told by a judge that the freeze on bank accounts had been continued on Nov. 7 for six months more. Despite the rally, a continuation of the freeze was expected, but not for six months. The apparent absconding of the owner of yet another high-yield investment company, Savings Unlimited, also was a topic for the crowd because a number of Villalobos investors also had accounts there. Savings Unlimited story BELOW! Security guards permitted a smaller group of about nine investors to go to the third floor of the Tribunales de Justicia building where Prosecutor Walter Espinoza Espinoza is investigating the case. But Espinoza was not there, and investors talked with a receptionist. Later the crowd cheered when organizer Michael J. Nystrom-Schut read an e-mail message purportedly sent by Villalobos to a long-time investor. The message contained many of the same phrases Villalobos used in a similar e-mail a month ago to A.M. Costa Rica. |
"I have not failed the investors"
. . . "and I do have people working on the issues," read the message. "Have
a little patience and everything will be alright," the businessman was
quoted as saying.
Nystrom-Schut said the message came encoded in the Pretty Good Privacy encryption program, but there was no way to verify independently the source of the message. A reporter’s query to a known Villalobos e-mail address went unanswered Tuesday night. Nystrom-Schut said he was confident that the Villalobos message was genuine because of certain unpublished contents shared by Villalobos and the man named Hal who produced the message. Even loyal investors have been critical of the way Villalobos has kept a low profile since he abruptly closed up his operation Oct. 14. Earlier in the day, about 10 a.m., Nystrom-Schut was a bit more aggressive. At first he said the rally would be non-violent, but he also challenged officials: "Let them throw 200 Gringos in jail." "Are you willing to go to jail," he asked the crowd. But no confrontation resulted, and the mood mellowed considerably under the eye of a handful of Fuerza Pública officers and workers in the courts. Villalobos has been under investigation since July 4, and he has blamed officials and the freeze on his 50 or more bank accounts here as the reasons he could no longer do business. He use to pay from 2.8 percent to 3 percent interest on an estimated $1 billion, but he has not paid interest since September. |
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Investor lists for both Savings Unlimited and Luis Enrique Villalobos Camacho have become public. The Savings Unlimited list shows that the high-yield firm had 2,980 accounts totaling about $160 million and in the names of about 2,600 persons, according to a source who contacted a reporter Tuesday. The Villalobos list is on 129 computer printout pages that each contain about 57 names for a total of 6,283 investors, according to Charles Zeller, a moving company operator who said he had obtained the list. Zeller said he wanted to show that investigators had such a list even though some have said they did not. Although not an investor himself, Zeller has been active in trying to protect people he characterized as his customers and good friends. No financial information was on the Villalobos list. A.M. Costa Rica declined copies of both |
lists because no apparent benefit
would be served in publishing the names. However, Zeller established the
credibility of the list by correctly answering reporters questions about
certain individuals who had accounts with Villalobos and some who did not.
The Savings Unlimited list was believed to have been obtained from disgruntled employees who lost their jobs when the operator, Louis Milanes, closed his Edificio Colón office and left town over the weekend. Zeller would not say how he got his list, but did say that some dates next to the names suggested it had been printed and placed in a binder sometime in May. The public availability of the lists are sure to cause concern among some investors, but investigators probably have their copies. The Savings Unlimited list, if genuine, triples the estimated amount of money handled by Milanes’ firm. Previous estimates were around the $50 million level. |
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