WHY GOLD MATTERS = American expatriots living in Mexico bank accounts has disappeared

https://www.sgtreport.com/2019/05/americans-life-savings-disappear-from-mexican-monex-bank/



Americans’ life savings disappear from Mexican Monex bank

May 29, 2019

from Fellowship Of The Minds:

Monex Casa del Bolsa, aka Holding Monex, is a Mexican financial institution founded in 1985 which is one of the world’s largest providers of commercial foreign exchange.
On its website, Monex says it engages in both corporate and private banking, and boasts that it is “an institution formed by leading companies in financial and payment businesses, that provide services and specialized products in the national and international market in an innovative manner and with the highest ethical and quality standards.”

With $5.2 billion in assets and operations in the U.S., Monex Casa del Bolsaalso provides banking services to foreigners visiting or doing business in Mexico, as well as many American expatriots living in Mexico.  Mostly retirees, they have to navigate a society with fewer legal and financial protections than they’d get in the U.S.
Those Americans, however, recently discovered that the money in their Monex bank accounts has disappeared.

David Welch reports for Bloomberg, May 24, 2019, that “Americans say money they had at Monex is gone and the bank isn’t helping them.”
Among those Americans are Kathy and Jim Machir, two of some 10,000 Americans who’d moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Last December, the Machirs called Marcela Zavala Taylor, their Monex banker of 9  years, to get cash for contractors building their retirement home in San Miguel de Allende, San Miguel, a city of 69,000 about 500 miles south of McAllen, Texas. But Zavala didn’t return calls, and the Machirs discovered that their nest egg was gone. Kathy Machir says: “When they told us we had 6 pesos [32¢] in our accounts, I just felt sick to my stomach. Since then, they have not dealt with us in good faith.”
Zavala is local royalty: daughter of former Mayor Manuel Zavala and his Texas-born wife, Peggy Taylor, an agent for Christie’s International Real Estate. Zavala has worked for Monex about 20 years, and became San Miguel’s banker of choice by winning over expats with promises of fat returns on accounts she claimed were dollar-denominated and immune to the peso’s fluctuations.
In early January, Monex officials told the Machirs and other San Miguel expatriates that about $40 million was missing from as many as 158 accounts, many belonging to English-speaking Americans.
A dozen people interviewed by Bloomberg News say that bank statementsZavala sent them purporting to show full accounts were apparently falsified. Most say the bank has told them little since they filed complaints, and some say Monex tried to settle for far less than the balances owed.
Kevin Carr, founder of financial technology firm Finiden in Washington, D.C., and formerly the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s primary representative in Mexico, says fraud is becoming more common. According to Condusef, Mexico’s consumer protection agency, last year there were 7.3 million complaints of fraud involving 18.9 billion pesos, about $1 billion — more than double the number of claims in 2014. Carr says “Mexican authorities try to prosecute these cases but often aren’t successful.”
Monex spokeswoman Eva Gutierrez said in a press release last Thursday that the bank is working with clients and has settled with 70%. Some clients interviewed by Bloomberg News who settled for reimbursement say Monex required them to file charges with the Procuraduria General de Justicia, the equivalent of an Attorney General’s Office, in Mexico City, where the bank is headquartered, and to name Zavala.
Read More @ FellowshipOfTheMinds.com