The U.S. justice department has charged a billionaire from Venezuela in a scandal involving more than $1 billion in bribes. He was also known as a client of a former Julius Baer banker.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Raúl Gorrín for his role in a billion-dollar currency exchange and money laundering scheme, it said in a statement released on its Website. Gorrín, 50, a billionaire and owner of Globovision media conglomerate, lives in Florida and has good connections to political circles in Venezuela.
He also is known to have been a client of Matthias Krull, a former banker with Julius Baer, the Swiss private bank. Krull in August confessed to having been a member of a money laundering ring that had washed $1.2 billion in briberies involving the Venezuela-based oil firm PDSVA. In October, Krull was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
Strategic Rethinking
Julius Baer said at the time that it hadn’t been part of the investigation. The money laundering scandal however prompted the bank to revamp its business strategy in Latin America.
Finma, the Swiss banking regulator, is conducting an enforcement procedure against Julius Baer.
