[3] Báez Figueroa was arrested on May 15, 2003, along with BANINTER vice presidents Marcos Báez Cocco and Vivian Lubrano de Castillo, the secretary of the Board of Directors, Jesús M. Troncoso, and financer Luis Álvarez Renta, on charges of bank fraud, money laundering and concealing information from the government as part of a massive fraud scheme of more than RD$ 55 billion (USD $2.2 billion).
[6] Moreover, it was prompted, as detailed at length in the trial that opened in April 2006, by a scandal involving debt writeoffs and sweetheart loans or other financial deals suspected of having favored leading politicians and others.
Anxious for a more permanent solution, the government announced in early 2003 that Banco del Progreso, run by Pedro Castillo, the brother of Mr. Mejía’s son-in-law, would acquire Baninter.
With 350 prosecution and defense witnesses slated to testify, ex-President Hipólito Mejía among them, the criminal proceedings against Mr. Báez Figueroa began on April 2, 2006.
[8] On October 21, 2007, after the long trial that concluded on September, Báez Figueroa was sentenced by a three-judge panel to 10 years in prison.
Friends of Báez Figueroa, groping to explain the shortcuts he took in running BANINTER, pointed to his political connections and a lack of competent managers at the bank.
Báez Figueroa's lawyer, Marino Vinicio Castillo, said in an interview that the whole affair had been trumped up for political reasons, and that the claim that RD$55 billion had been embezzled was "a fable."
[citation needed] Even after his arrest Báez Figueroa remained a central figure in the country's elite, readily accessible even in jail.