[WSMDiscuss] (Fwd) Ecuador's election, yesterday: neoliberal bankster wins (surprisingly); petro-Keynesian extractivist barely loses... was the margin due to Pachakutik indigenous anti-extractivists' "null" vote?

[Patrick Bond]

(The margin was so close, and Yaku Pérez had called for a "null" vote by 
his 20% Pachakutik support base, of whom apparently around a third 
followed his advice. So it seems reasonable to assume that, like Ralph 
Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a Green-Left candidate has 
given the centrists a "cold shower."

     Like Nader's role, it seems like an awful strategic blunder by very 
admirable people, at first blush. The winner - the neoliberal Guillermo 
Lasso, with 52% - should be arrested for his illegal Panama operations 
via Banco Guayaquil, but that's not likely.

     So it's quite a controversial moment: if Lasso won /because /the 
eco-indigenous-feminist left withdrew support from the extractivist 
centre-left, remembering how miserable Correa made them, this is a 
fascinating signal to the rest of the world's poor-country nationalist 
reformers: /become more radical/, so you don't get stuck in a pincer, 
like Andrés Arauz.

     A less hopeful line, though, is to expect much more conflict 
between the three big blocs, especially in parliament where Lasso's team 
is only the third most popular party, and Pachakutik at #2 can keep up 
the heat.

/New York Times:/

    Among the hallmarks of the election this year was the emergence of
    the country’s long marginalized Indigenous movement as a key driver
    of the political conversation. When Mr. Lasso is sworn in later this
    year, he will be forced to reckon with the country’s Indigenous
    party, Pachakutik. Pachakutik and its allies jolted the nation in
    the first round of voting, in February, winning half of all states,
    becoming the second-largest presence in Congress and transforming
    the agendas of the finalists in Sunday’s presidential race.

     Agence France Press:

    /Lasso scraped into the runoff by less than half a percentage point
    ahead of indigenous candidate Yaku Perez, who contested the result
    and claimed to have been the victim of fraud. Socialist Perez, whose
    Pachakutik indigenous movement is the second-largest bloc in the
    legislature, picked up more than 19 percent of the vote in the first
    round. Pachakutik refused to back either candidate in the second
    round and promoted blank votes. Perez publically annulled his own
    vote writing "Yaku president resistence" on his ballot. Around 16
    percent of votes were invalid, up from 9.55 percent in the first
    round/.)

***Conservative Ex-Banker Headed to Victory in Presidential Election in 
Ecuador*

José María León Cabrera and Anatoly Kurmanaev./New York Times/. April 
12, 2021

QUITO, Ecuador — Guillermo Lasso, a 66-year-old conservative former 
banker, was set to win Ecuador’s presidential election and beat out 
Andrés Arauz, a 36-year-old leftist handpicked by former President 
Rafael Correa.

With more than 94 percent of the votes counted after 10 p.m., Mr. Lasso 
had 52 percent compared with Mr. Arauz’s 47.32 percent, according to the 
Electoral Council official counting system in Ecuador. Mr. Arauz 
conceded defeat in a speech.

“This is an electoral setback,” Mr. Arauz said, addressing his 
supporters at a hotel in Quito, the capital. “This is not an end, but a 
start.” He urged national unity and said he would call Mr. Lasso to 
congratulate him.

A few minutes afterward, Mr. Lasso gave his first speech as the presumed 
president-elect. On his Inauguration Day, he said, “we will take on the 
challenge of changing the destiny of our fatherland. We will work 
tirelessly.” Mr. Lasso promised to fulfill the promises made to 
Indigenous groups, environmentalist activists and women’s right 
organizations.

The Electoral Council said in a brief news conference that it would 
remain in session in case either Mr. Arauz or Mr. Lasso filed objections 
to the results — improbable after Mr. Arauz’s concession.

The vote signaled a desire, at least among some, to shift right 
following years in which Mr. Correa has held sway over the country.

“He’s been working since he was very young, and he has created jobs,” 
said one Lasso supporter, Diana Velasteguí, 33, the owner of several 
small restaurants. “That is what is required right now.”

But the vote was not just a battle between the country’s left and right. 
Among the hallmarks of the election this year was the emergence of the 
country’s long marginalized Indigenous movement as a key driver of the 
political conversation.

When Mr. Lasso is sworn in later this year, he will be forced to reckon 
with the country’s Indigenous party, Pachakutik. Pachakutik and its 
allies jolted the nation in the first round of voting, in February, 
winning half of all states, becoming the second-largest presence in 
Congress and transforming the agendas of the finalists in Sunday’s 
presidential race.

“The politics of Ecuador will never be the same,” said Farith Simon, an 
Ecuadorean law professor and columnist. “There’s still racism, but 
there’s also a re-vindication of the value of Indigenous culture, of 
pride in their national role.”

Since February, eager to court Indigenous voters and mindful of the need 
to work with the newly powerful Indigenous bloc in Congress, Mr. Arauz 
and Mr. Lasso revamped their messages and shifted the contest from the 
polarizing socialist-versus-conservative ground that had defined 
national politics for years. Debates emerged instead on Ecuador’s 
deep-seated inequality and on an economic model reliant on the export of 
oil and metals extracted from Indigenous lands.

Both candidates promised to enact greater environmental safeguards and 
to grant Indigenous communities more say over the extraction of 
resources. Mr. Lasso vowed to improve economic opportunities for 
Indigenous people, who, despite decades of progress, lag far behind 
national averages in access to education, health care and jobs.

Mr. Arauz promised to lead Ecuador as a true “plurinational” country in 
recognition of its 15 Indigenous nations. Though largely symbolic, the 
designation had been sought for decades by Pachakutik as a powerful 
acknowledgment of its people’s central place in Ecuador.

The rise of Pachakutik on the national stage has not only brought 
attention to the country’s Indigenous minority, it has also posed deeper 
questions of identity for the entire electorate. Though just 8 percent 
of Ecuadoreans identified themselves as Indigenous in the last census, 
much of the population is ethnically mixed.

“This is a difficult conversation for us as a nation, but there’s no 
turning back,” Mr. Simon said.

The man most responsible for the political sea change was the 
environmental activist Yaku Pérez, the Pachakutik presidential candidate 
in February’s first round of voting.

Mr. Pérez, 52, narrowly missed the runoff, but he greatly broadened 
Pachakutik’s historical single-digit appeal with his support for women’s 
rights, equality for L.G.B.T.Q. people and efforts to fight climate 
change. Mr. Pérez also backed abortion rights and same-sex marriage, 
creating tensions in his socially conservative Indigenous constituency.

“Pérez had an enormous capacity to open his horizons, his discourse, to 
incorporate themes that weren’t there” in Ecuadorean politics, said 
Alberto Acosta, a former Pachakutik presidential candidate.

Mr. Pérez’s rise is part of a larger generational shift in Latin 
America’s leftist movements. Partly driven by social media and political 
protests in the United States, where most Latin American nations have 
large diasporas, younger left-leaning politicians are prioritizing 
environment, gender and minority issues over the Marxist doctrine of 
their mentors.

In neighboring Peru, Verónika Mendoza, 40, was among the top contenders 
in Sunday’s presidential election, promising to grant land titles to 
Indigenous communities and protect the environment. In Bolivia, the 
34-year-old Indigenous leader Eva Copa recently won a mayor’s race in El 
Alto, a melting-pot city considered a bellwether.

This new generation of leaders is going beyond the traditional 
left-right divide, challenging their countries’ historical reliance on 
large mining, oil and agribusiness projects for economic growth, said 
Carwil Bjork-James, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

“These are big continental questions that the Indigenous movements have 
been asking for a long time,” Mr. Bjork-James said. “To see these 
questions being asked politically is a new level.”

Such a framework is shortsighted, their rivals say. South American 
nations have no alternative but to rely on revenue from raw materials to 
recover from the coronavirus pandemic. And only through economic 
development, they say, can inequalities be fully addressed.

In Ecuador, Mr. Pérez managed to win nearly 20 percent of February’s 
vote, but his party and its allies soared from nine to 43 congressional 
seats in the election, becoming kingmakers in the country’s fractured 
137-seat legislature.

The campaign had initially focused on the legacy of Rafael Correa, 
Ecuador’s longest-serving democratic president. He had lifted millions 
from poverty during a commodities boom in the 2000s, but his 
authoritarian style and the corruption allegations that trailed him had 
left the nation bitterly divided.

Mr. Correa, who left office in 2017, picked Mr. Arauz to represent his 
leftist movement this year, catapulting him to the top of the polls 
despite his limited experience and national recognition. Mr. Lasso 
centered his early campaign message on fears that Mr. Correa would 
continue to exert influence.

But the first-round results “showed that a great part of the population 
doesn’t want to be boxed into this conflict between Correa’s supporters 
and opponents, which reduces Ecuadoreans’ problems to a binary vision,” 
said Mr. Acosta, the former candidate.

Pachakutik’s electoral success this year traces to a wave of national 
protests in October 2019, when the Indigenous movement marched on the 
capital, Quito, to demand the repeal of a deeply unpopular cut in 
gasoline subsidies. The protests turned violent, claiming at least eight 
lives, but the government withdrew the subsidy cut after 12 days of unrest.

“We showed the country that the Indigenous people are looking for a 
transformation of this dominant system that only serves the most 
affluent,” said Diocelinda Iza, a leader of the Kichwa nation in the 
central province of Cotopaxi.

The life of Mr. Pérez, the presidential candidate, embodies the travails 
of the Indigenous movement. He was born in a high Andean valley in 
southern Ecuador to a family of impoverished farmers. His father was 
Kichwa, his mother Kañari.

His parents worked on the estate of a local landowner without pay in 
return for living on his property, a rural arrangement that has changed 
little since colonial times.

 From his childhood, Mr. Pérez said he remembers the seemingly endless 
toil in the fields, the pangs of hunger, and the humiliation he felt at 
school when his mother came to parent meetings dressed in traditional 
skirts.

“I felt a lot of shame to be Indigenous, to come from the field, to be a 
farmer, to have a sharecropper father,” Mr. Pérez said in an interview 
in March. To succeed at school, he said, “I ended up whitening myself, 
colonizing myself, rejecting our identity.”

Mr. Pérez ended up studying at a local university, practicing law and 
becoming involved in politics through local associations defending 
communal water rights. He rose to become the governor of Ecuador’s Azuay 
region, the country’s fifth-most populous, before quitting to run for 
president.

His story has resonated with other Indigenous people, many of whom see 
the political efforts of today in the context of the five centuries 
since Ecuador’s colonial conquest.

“We’re not campaigning for a person,” said one Indigenous leader, Luz 
Namicela Contento, “but for a political project.”

***


  Lasso wins Ecuador presidency as Arauz concedes

Monday 12 April 2021 - 6:00am

Former banker Guillermo Lasso (R) won Ecuador's presidential election 
after a campaign dominated by an economic crisis aggravated by the 
Covid-19 pandemic

Former banker Guillermo Lasso (R) won Ecuador's presidential election 
after a campaign dominated by an economic crisis aggravated by the 
Covid-19 pandemic

AFP | Fernando Mendez

QUITI - Former banker Guillermo Lasso won Ecuador's presidential 
election on Sunday after his socialist opponent Andres Arauz conceded.

Conservative Lasso declared himself president-elect and accepted the 
"challenge" of changing Ecuador's "destiny."

With 93 percent of votes counted, Lasso held a lead of almost five 
percentage points over economist Arauz.

"On May 24 we will assume with responsibility the challenge of changing 
our country's destiny and achieving for all Ecuador the opportunities 
and prosperity we all yearn for," said Lasso.

Economist Arauz, who is best known as the protege of former president 
Rafael Correa, was magnanimous despite earlier claiming victory 
following a tight exit poll.

"I congratulate him on his electoral triumph today and I will show him 
our democratic convictions," said Arauz.

Lasso had 52.51 percent of the vote compared to Arauz's 47.49 percent 
with 93.14 percent of votes counted, the National Electoral Council said.

Seasoned politician Lasso, 65, has twice before finished second in 
presidential votes.

Earlier, television stations Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas published the 
results of the Cedatos exit poll that gave Lasso almost a 6.5 percentage 
point lead over Arauz.

But the stations also said the Clima Social pollsters had indicated the 
result was a technical draw and thus decided not to publish their figures.

Arauz's campaign team used that poll to claim victory by 1.6 percentage 
points.

"Thank you Ecuador! This is a victory for the Ecuadoran people," Arauz 
said on Twitter. "No one will prevent the course of history."

*- 'Social division' -*

Voting is obligatory, and opinion polls had the rivals neck and neck 
heading into the election for oil-rich Ecuador's 13.1 million registered 
voters to pick a successor to the deeply unpopular Lenin Moreno.

The campaign in the South American country had been dominated by an 
economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arauz, 36, is virtually unknown but topped February's first round of 
voting on the back of support from his mentor, Correa, who led the 
country from 2007-2017.

He didn't vote on Sunday because he is still registered in Mexico, where 
he was studying for a doctorate before deciding to run in the election.

Lasso, 65, is a third-time presidential candidate having finished second 
to Correa in 2013 and Moreno in 2017.

Many experts billed the election as a battle of "Correism versus 
anti-Correism" in a country bitterly divided along political lines.

Ecuadorans voted as the oil-rich country contends with an economic 
crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic

"This social division, that the campaign highlighted, means that the 
vote to reject Correa effectively goes to Lasso," said Pablo Romero, an 
analyst at Salesiana University.

Correa would have been Arauz's running mate but for an eight-year 
conviction for corruption.

He lives in exile in Belgium, where his wife was born, avoiding his 
prison sentence. But his influence on Ecuadoran politics remains strong.

Arauz, the candidate from the Union of Hope coalition, topped the first 
round with almost 33 percent of the vote, 13 percentage points ahead of 
Lasso, from the Creating Opportunities movement.

*- 'Permanent tension' -*

Lasso will take over from beleaguered Moreno on May 24 and will 
immediately face an economic crisis exasperated by a 7.8 percent 
contraction in GDP in 2020.

Overall debt is almost $64 billion -- 63 percent of GDP -- of which $45 
billion is external debt.

At the same time, the country has been hard-hit by the pandemic, with 
hospitals overwhelmed by more than 340,000 coronavirus infections and 
more than 17,000 deaths.

Lasso also faces a tough job during his four-year term with Arauz's 
leftist coalition the largest party in parliament.

"There will be permanent tension with the executive. There's almost no 
chance of the reforms the country needs," said Romero.

Lasso scraped into the runoff by less than half a percentage point ahead 
of indigenous candidate Yaku Perez, who contested the result and claimed 
to have been the victim of fraud.

Socialist Perez, whose Pachakutik indigenous movement is the 
second-largest bloc in the legislature, picked up more than 19 percent 
of the vote in the first round.

Pachakutik refused to back either candidate in the second round and 
promoted blank votes.

Perez publically annulled his own vote writing "Yaku president 
resistence" on his ballot.

Around 16 percent of votes were invalid, up from 9.55 percent in the 
first round.

Source
AFP

***

/<https://foreignpolicy.com/category/latin-america-brief/>/


      /Foreign Policy
      <https://foreignpolicy.com/category/latin-america-brief/>/

/<https://foreignpolicy.com/category/latin-america-brief/>/


  South America’s Election Super Sunday


    “None of the above” is a popular vote in Ecuador and Peru, spelling
    legitimacy troubles.

By Catherine Osborn <https://foreignpolicy.com/author/catherine-osborn/>

| April 9, 2021, 8:00 AM
General view of Peruvian presidential candidates during the third and 
final televised debate organized by the National Electoral Jury in Lima 
on March 31.
General view of Peruvian presidential candidates during the third and 
final televised debate organized by the National Electoral Jury in Lima 
on March 31. Sebastian Castaneda/AFP/Getty Images

Welcome to /Foreign Policy/’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru prepare 
for*elections*, 25 young*Spanish-language novelists* to watch, and the 
*politics of vaccination *in Venezuela.

*If you would like to receive Latin America Brief in your inbox every 
Friday, please sign up here 
<http://foreignpolicy.com/category/latin-america-brief>.*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

//*Social Unrest Meets the Ballot Box*

On Sunday, Ecuador will hold the second round of its presidential 
election, Peru will conduct congressional elections and the first round 
of its presidential elections, and Bolivian voters in four departments 
will choose governors in a runoff. Chile had originally planned to elect 
delegates to its constitutional assembly on Sunday, but it pushed the 
date to May due to a COVID-19 surge.

The three countries that will hold votes are each living with the 
aftermath of political crisis and mass protest in the last two years. In 
the cases of Ecuador 
<https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-04-07/los-ultimos-sondeos-apuntan-a-un-empate-tecnico-en-la-carrera-presidencial-de-ecuador.html> 
and Peru 
<https://www.infobae.com/america/america-latina/2021/04/04/elecciones-en-peru-a-una-semana-de-las-presidenciales-se-mantiene-el-multiple-empate-tecnico-entre-6-candidatos/>, 
very tight polling makes it difficult to predict presidential winners. 
As many as 20 percent of voters in Ecuador and 28 percent in Peru said 
in the final stretch of the campaign that they were still undecided or 
planned to cast blank votes, signaling low confidence in their options. 
One factor setting the two elections apart is that Peru’s presidential 
victor will face much more difficult congressional math in terms of real 
ability to carry out plans.

*Consolidated forces in Ecuador. *In congressional and first-round 
presidential elections held on Feb. 7, momentum from 2019’s protests was 
channeled into support for left-wing parties that defined themselves in 
opposition to leftist stalwart and former President Rafael Correa, whom 
they call authoritarian. The new more democratic and environmentally 
friendly left grew its representation in Congress, backing the second- 
and third-largest parties, the Indigenous Pachakutik party and the 
Democratic Left. Correa’s party is the largest; conservative right-wing 
parties are the fourth and fifth.

All told, after February’s elections, the three major forces in 
Ecuadorian politics—Correísmo, its competition on the left, and those to 
the right—are now healthily represented in the legislature. The two 
presidential candidates who will face off in this weekend’s runoff hail 
from Correísmo and the right. To pull votes from the new left, the 
candidates are appealing to Indigenous voters in the final stretch of 
the campaign, a signal of this bloc’s increased power in Ecuador’s new 
political landscape.

While the high levels of voters intending to leave their ballots blank 
indicates some automatic disapproval of the new president, Ecuador is a 
case where public grievances have translated into a new political map 
that appears better equipped to address them.

***


  Ecuadorian Candidate Guillermo Lasso: Financial Assets and Political
  Liabilities


        March 24, 2017


      Jake Johnston <https://cepr.net/staff-member/jake-johnston/>

<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Investigation into Guillermo 
Lasso’s offshore holdings and trusts indicates that Lasso may be 
breaking Ecuadorian law with his ownership stake in a bank in the tax 
haven of 
Panama.&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcepr.net%2Fecuadorian-candidate-guillermo-lasso-financial-assets-and-political-liabilities%2F>
Guillermo Lasso, the opposition presidential candidate in Ecuador’s 
upcoming runoff election, resigned as executive vice president of one of 
Ecuador’s largest banks, Banco Guayaquil, in 2012. In the current 
campaign, much of the international media has referred to Lasso as an 
“ex-banker” or “former banker.” But an investigation 
<https://www.pagina12.com.ar/25889-lasso-el-magnate-de-las-offshore> 
into Lasso’s offshore holdings and trusts, by Cynthia Garcia 
<https://www.cynthiagarcia.com.ar/> of Argentina’s Página/12, reveals a 
complex web 
<https://www.pagina12.com.ar/27029-lasso-en-jaque-por-los-negocios-en-panama> 
of holding companies that obscure Lasso’s financial positions and 
indicates that Lasso may even be breaking Ecuadorian law 
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/325442-media-cant-ignore-financial-scandal-in-ecuadors-presidential>with 
his ownership stake in a bank in the tax haven of Panama.

In 2013, according to public records 
<http://appscvs.supercias.gob.ec/consultaPdfBaseImagen/VisualizaDocumetos.zul?tipoDocumento=general&expediente=19762&tipoCambio=32&idDocumento=1.1.1&fecha=2013-04-03%2011:36:40.0&secuencial=1> 
from Ecuador’s Superintendency of Corporations, five Delaware-registered 
companies, bearing the names of cities across the world, transferred 
their shares in Banco Guayaquil’s parent company, Corporación MultiBG, 
to five trusts. Each trust just happens to bear the initials of family 
members <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nffj3LBH6zE&feature=youtu.be> 
and associates of Lasso. One contains Lasso’s initials — GLM — for 
Guillermo Lasso Mendoza (Fideicomiso Mercantil de Administración GLM). 
It appears that Lasso has maintained a significant stake in Banco 
Guayaquil through this trust.

Ownership records 
<http://appscvs.supercias.gob.ec/certificadoslinea/socios_accionistas.zul?codigo=1192218&ruc=0990560536001&expediente=19762&nombre=CORPORACION%20MULTIBG%20S.A.&codigo_barras=S0001192218&sit_legal=ACTIVA> 
from Ecuador’s Superintendency of Companies show that GLM trust is 
currently the largest shareholder in Corporación MultiBG, with a 39.5 
percent stake. Together, the five trusts related to Lasso control 77.5 
percent of the shares of MultiBG.

A 2014 Banco Guayaquil document 
<http://www.bolsadequito.info/uploads/prosp/A-B/BANCO%20GUAYAQUIL/OCAS/BCO%20GUAYAQUIL%20OCAS%202014.pdf>, 
prepared for a bond issuance, reveals that MultiBG holds 78.87 percent 
of the $293 million in Banco Guayaquil shares. This would imply that GLM 
Trust currently has a more than $90 million stake in the bank; the five 
trusts together hold almost double that.

Despite being described as a “former banker,” Lasso has continued as the 
chairman of MultiBG and still presides over board meetings of Banco 
Guayaquil’s parent company, according to public records from 
<http://appscvs.supercias.gob.ec/consultaPdfBaseImagen/VisualizaDocumetos.zul?tipoDocumento=economica&expediente=19762&idDocumento=3.1.N%20%20&fecha=2015-12-31%2000:00:00.0> 
Ecuador’s Superintendency of Corporations.

In his presidential campaign, Lasso has pledged to eliminate a number of 
taxes 
<http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/guillermolasso-impustos-elecciones-ecuador-presidencia.html> 
that have been levied on the financial sector 
<https://cepr.net/press-release/ecuador-after-ten-years-of-president-correa-new-paper-examines-key-indicators-reforms-and-policy-changes/> 
under the administration of current President Rafael Correa. Lasso’s 
apparent ownership stake in Banco Guayaquil means he would stand to make 
millions off those tax cuts, if implemented.

But the revelations do not just concern his obscured and likely stake in 
Ecuador’s financial sector.

In 2007, Banco Guayaquil opened an offshore bank 
<https://www.superbancos.gob.pa/superbancos/documentos/leyes_y_regulaciones/resolucion/2007/resolucion_110-07.pdf> 
in Panama, Banco de Guayaquil (Panamá). A 2007 public record 
<https://www.superbancos.gob.pa/superbancos/documentos/leyes_y_regulaciones/comunicados/2007/aviso16-2007.pdf> 
from Panama’s Superintendency of Banks reveals that the largest 
shareholder of Corporación MultiBG (the parent company of Banco 
Guayaquil) at the time was Andean Investments Ltd 
<http://appscvs.supercias.gob.ec/consultaPdfBaseImagen/VisualizaDocumetos.zul?tipoDocumento=general&expediente=19762&tipoCambio=70&idDocumento=1.6.3&fecha=2010-02-26%2009:36:19.933&secuencial=1>, 
a Cayman Island registered company. Andean Investments is no longer an 
active company, as it appears its shares went to the Delaware registered 
companies, and then, most recently, to the trusts associated with Lasso. 
But the record indicates the historical connections between Lasso and 
offshore holding companies.

In 2011, the name of Banco de Guayaquil (Panamá) was changed to Banisi 
<https://www.superbancos.gob.pa/superbancos/documentos/leyes_y_regulaciones/resolucion/2011/resolucion_128-11.pdf>.

In 2014, Ecuador passed new legislation that prevented bankers (or 
banks) from having subsidiaries in offshore tax havens. Panama is 
considered as such <http://www.sri.gob.ec/de/10238> by Ecuador’s 
Superintendency of Banks.

Following the new law, Banisi transferred 100 percent of its shares 
<https://www.superbancos.gob.pa/superbancos/documentos/leyes_y_regulaciones/comunicados/2014/aviso3-2014.pdf> 
to a new Panama-registered company, Banisi Holding.

The Panamanian Public Registry of Corporations docket on Banisi Holding 
(Folio Nº 788480) confirms Guillermo Lasso is the president and a 
director. Lasso’s wife is listed as a director and as the treasurer. 
Lasso’s son is also listed among the officers. The registry shows Banisi 
Holding as having $30 million in capital. The company was registered by 
the law firm Sucre, Arias and Reyes, based in Panama. But the corporate 
records do not disclose who the ultimate owners of Banisi Holding 
actually are.

In April 2016, following the release of the “Panama Papers,” Lasso 
acknowledged 
<http://www.creo.com.ec/noticias/tengo-un-banco-en-panama-constituido-en-forma-transparente/> 
that he had a Panamanian company, Banisi Holding, that owned Banisi Bank.

But the paper trail continues to disguise Lasso’s apparent stake in 
Banisi. A 2015 audit of Banisi Holding 
<https://www.banisipanama.com/images/estados-financieros/banisi-holding-s-a-dic-2015.pdf>, 
conducted by the international firm Deloitte, states that the ultimate 
controlling company of Banisi Holding is yet another Panamanian company, 
Pietro Overseas.

Pietro Overseas, according to the Panamanian Public Registry of 
Corporations (Folio Nº 735031) has capital of just $10,000. It was 
registered by the Panamanian law firm Aleman, Cordero, Galindo & Lee. 
Its directors are Marco A. San Berguido, Gina A. Martinez G., and 
Fernando A. Gil. The directors, who appear to be Panamanian lawyers, are 
associated with hundreds of companies in Panama.

Is Pietro Overseas, in reality, owned by Lasso? And does it even matter, 
since Lasso already admitted to owning Banisi? Either way, the public 
record raises significant questions about Lasso’s financial holdings 
both in Ecuador and abroad, if his ownership of Banisi Holding is proven 
in court, would appear to put him in violation of Ecuador’s laws.


    Jake Johnston <https://cepr.net/staff-member/jake-johnston/> |
    Senior Research Associate

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