MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine judge to subpoena foreign bankers.

An Argentine federal judge will subpoena German, American and Swiss bank executives for questioning about an alleged multi-million-dollar asset-stripping scheme that hurt thousands of Argentine and Uruguayan investors.

These bankers are expected to appear before Judge Maria Servini de Cubria, who is investigating illegal wire transfers suspected of having led to the bankruptcy of Argentina's Banco General de Negocios, or BGN, reports the Argentine press.

The bankers are: Bernd Fahrholz, of Germany's Dresdner Bank; William Harrison Jr., of U.S.-based JP Morgan, and Lukas Muehlemann, of Switzerland's Credit Suisse. The three sat on BGN's board as representatives of their financial institutions.

Subpoenas will be mailed to the foreign banks' headquarters within the next few days. On receipt bankers will then have ten days to appear before the judge.

The Argentine judge's probe is linked to a similar action in Montevideo into alleged asset-stripping at the now-bankrupt Banco Comercial de Uruguay, whose main shareholders were also JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and Dresdner.

These banks had as their regional representative brothers Carlos and Jose Rohm - the former currently under arrest in Buenos Aires, the latter, a fugitive residing in Miami who has accepted to be questioned by a Uruguayan judged but?in the United States. With the collapse of BGN's an estimated $600 million US dollars disappeared and in the case of the Uruguayan Banco Comercial, another 800 million US dollars, according to figures compiled by a collection agency representing the bank's former customers in Buenos Aires and Uruguay.

Argentine prosecutors accuse the Rohm brothers of capital flight and financial fraud committed through the Compañia General de Negocios, a financial company registered in Uruguay and used to wire funds to Banco Comercial and off-shore companies headquartered in the Virgin Islands.

Argentine prosecutors Horacio Comparatore and Patricio Evers say they have proof that the Rohm brothers devised a system for laundering money, evading taxes and moving money offshore.

They also contend that such transactions contributed to the collapse of the Argentine financial system and the political crisis that followed with the fall of the government of Fernando de la Rua in December 2001.

Carlos Rohm stands accused in Uruguay, among other illicit actions, of using for personal business an estimated $250 million in credit instruments from Banco Comercial that were diverted to a trust account at Argentina's BGN.