US$2.5B Baninter bank fraud convict releases on alleged ills

Santo Domingo.- San Cristobal Sentencing judge Jose Medrano on Friday ordered the release of ex banker Marcos Báez Cocco, sentenced to 10 years in prison for the Banco Intercontinental (Baninter) US$2.5 billion fraud case.

Medrano ruled to send Báez Cocco under house arrest, on the ex banker’s alleged chronic health problems, a decision to be revised in three months.

And though the ruling was immediately challenged by Central Bank’s attorneys, which noted that the ex Baninter vice president doesn’t have a terminal illness, they’ve yet to decide whether they’ll appeal.

Báez Cocco was hospitalized on neurological problems in March, when Prisons Director Mario Acosta said the inmate reportedly had serious health problems and sometimes "his brain went blank."

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison together with Baninter president Ramon Baez Figueroa and the financier Luis Alvarez Renta, while Vivian Lubrano de Castillo was sentenced to 6 years, but pardoned months later.