Banco Intercontinental (or BANINTER) was the second largest privately held commercial bank in the Dominican Republic before collapsing in 2003 in a fraud tied to political corruption. Ramón Báez Figueroa and expansion of BANINTER Banco Intercontinental was created in 1986 by Ramón Báez Romano, a businessman and former Industry Minister. Later, Ramón Báez Figueroa, took over the bank. BANINTER Group owned Listín Diario; four television stations, a cable television company, and more than 70 radio stations. Bank crisis On April 7, 2003, the government took control of BANINTER. 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 Luis Alvarez Renta, on charges of bank fraud, money laundering and concealing information from the government as part of a fraud scheme of more than RD$55 billion (US$2.23 billion). The sum was equivalent to two-thirds of the national budget of the Dominican Republic at the time of the event. The resulting central bank bailout spurred a 30% annual inflation and a large increase in poverty. The government was forced to devalue the peso, triggering the collapse of two other banks, and prompting a US$600 million (420 million €) loan package from the International Monetary Fund. Though required by the country's Monetary Laws to only guarantee individual deposits of up to RD$500,000 Dominican Pesos (about US$21,000 at the time) placed within the country, the Dominican Central Bank (Banco Central Dominicano) opted to guarantee all $2.2B in unbacked BANINTER deposits, regardless of the amount, or whether deposits were in Dominican Pesos or American Dollars and without apparent knowledge whether the deposits were held in the Dominican Republic or in BANINTER's branches in the Cayman Islands and Panama. The subsequent fiscal shortfall resulted in massive inflation (42%) and the devaluation of the DOP by over 100%. Former president Mejía and the Central Bank (Banco Central) stated that the unlimited payouts to depositors were to protect the Dominican banking system from a crisis of confidence and potential chain reaction. However, the overall consequence of the bailout was to reimburse the wealthiest of Dominican depositors, some of whom had received rates of interest as high as 27% annually, at the expense of the majority of poor Dominicans—the latter of whom would be required to pay the cost of the bailout through inflation, currency devaluation, government