austerity plans and higher taxes over the coming years. Aftermath and trial The banking crisis ignited harsh fights over BANINTER group's media outlets, including the prominent newspaper Listín Diario, which was temporarily seized and run by the Mejía administration following the bank collapse. In 2003, TV commentator Rafael Acevedo, president of the opinion polling firm Gallup Dominicana, had said that in the BANINTER scandal "there has been much complicity at every level of society: the government, the media, the church, the military.". In November 2005, Alvarez Renta was found liable by a federal jury in Miami of civil racketeering and illegal money transfers in a conspiracy to loot BANINTER during its final months of existence. Alvarez Renta was ordered to pay $177 Million to the Dominican state. To this date, he still hasn't paid that sum. The main executives of BANINTER, Báez Figueroa, his cousin Marcos Báez Cocco, Vivian Lubrano, Jesús Troncoso Ferrúa, as well as the aforementioned Alvarez Renta, were prosecuted by the Dominican state for fraud and money laundering, among other criminal charges. Báez Figueroa's main attorney is Marino Vinicio Castillo, who at the present time holds the position of President Fernandez's Drugs Consultant. With 350 prosecutions and defense witnesses slated to testify, ex- president Hipólito Mejía among them, the criminal proceedings against Báez Figueroa began on April 2, 2006. However, the Court decided to postpone the first hearing for May 19, 2006, accepting a motion by the defense lawyers. It was prompted, as detailed at length in the trial by a scandal involving debt writeoffs and sweetheart loans or other financial deals suspected of having favored leading politicians and others. What remains most curious was that the fraud went undetected for 14 years by the country's supposed financial gatekeepers—the Central Bank, the Superintendent of Banks and U. S. accounting company PricewaterhouseCoopers. How Báez Figueroa and his cronies were accused and some convicted of pulling it off provided a glimpse into the gift-giving and favor-swapping common between private business and top government officials in the Dominican Republic. The first trial ended in September 2007. Sentence and criticism On October 21, 2007, Báez Figueroa was sentenced by a three-judge panel to 10 years in prison. Additionally, he was ordered to pay restitution and damages totalling RD$63 billion. The laundering charges were excluded, but the other suspected mastermind of the fraud, Luis Alvarez Renta, was convicted and sentenced to 10