Former Banco Elca Investors and President Sue Bank Regulator
Investors of the now gone Banco Elca have made a formal charge against the officials of the Superintendecia General de Entitades Financieras (SUGEF) - the regulator  of banks and financial institutions.

The suit is against Oscar Rodríguez Ulloa, the superintendent of SUGEF; Manrique Lopéz Soto and Roy Gerardo Araya Araya, both who were involved in the intervention of the Banco Elca; and Cecila Sancho Calvo, general director of supervision of private banks.

The charge was presented on January 8 before the Fiscalía Adjunta de Delitos Econimicos del I Circuito Judicial de San José.

The investors suit is in addition to a charge by former Banco Elca president, Carlos Alvardo Moya, who present his suit in December against the SUGEF officials (savel Rodríguez), for the incompletion of their duties and fraudulent administration.

The investors as the former bank president claim that there are discreptencies between the accounting with respect with the financial state of the bank that the SUGEF publicly published and what it presented to the courts to effectively bankrupt the private bank.

The claim is that the SUGEF obligated the bank to increase its reserves for loans the bank regulator felt could not be recovered, and though the bank was shut down, 66.5% of those loans were hence recovered, says the suit. The suit also claims that SUGEF sold many of the bank's assets well below their worth.

SUGEF intervened Banco Elca in June of 2004 and by August of that year it was deemed insolvent and the process of liquidation began. Carlos Alvarado and two other Banco Elca officials were arrested and spent time in preventive detention while the Fiscalía investigated possible fraud.

While the two bank officials were released within months of their detention, Alvardo was held in detention until June of 2006.

The claimants say that the SUGEF moved in too quickly which led to the bank's demise and that the officials of the SUGEF were overzealous in their actions and caused the loss suffered by the investors by the closing and subsequent liquidation.

Alvardo, in his claim, also details how the SUGEF officials destroyed or hid important documents from judicial investigators, documents that would be able to prove the sale of bank assets below their value.

The Alvarado claim also specifies how Cecilia Sancho refused to provide investors information on the banks financial position; and, ordered the withdrawl of us$1 million dollars from an account held by Corporación Elca Internacional, which led to the deterioration of the Banco Elca's financial base.

Alvarado also added SUGEF official Marco Cuadra Leiva to his claim, charging Cuadra with extortion. Alvarado says that Cuadra accepted us$500.000 to work out a recovery plan to save the bank, but he never help up his end of the bargain nor did Cuadra return the money.