Annotations for Countries: Bahamas

In yet another scandal, the New York Bank account of Costa Rica president Jose Figueres has grown by $325,000 dollars since that Central American nation gave haven to American financier Robert Vesco. According to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal said securities and exchange commission documents show that 325,000 was transferred to the Figueres account at the National Bank of North America in New York over a period from last August to early this year. The money, the Journal said, came from Vesco linked companies in The Bahamas and Costa Rica. 

Vesco is under indictment in New York, along with former Attorney General John Mitchell and former commerce secretary Maurice Stans on charges of trying to influence a securities and exchange commission investigation with a $200,000 dollar contribution to President Nixon's 1972 campaign. The SEC has brought suit against Vesco in the United States, charging him with defrauding shareholders of investors overseas services of $224 million dollars during a period when he was investing heavily here. 

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, where Vesco has been a controversial figure since last summer, the 37-year-old financier was cleared of any charges of wrongdoing in that country by a special congressional committee, but it is estimated that he had put 5.25 million into Costa Rica nationalized banks, 1.5 million into a government housing institute, 1 million into a government waterworks institute, and an undisclosed amount in private residences, a coffee plantation, timber-works, and low income housing construction. This story from the Wall Street Journal.