Room II of the Civil and Commercial Chamber of San Isidro enabled the opening of the preventive bankruptcy of fintech creditors Wenance, investigated for claims from savers and investors who stopped collecting their respective interests.
Days ago, Chamber V of the Crime Chamber confirmed the decision of Judge Paula González, who decided to exempt from prison Alexander MuszakCEO of the fintech Wenance, accused in a court case for the crimes of usury, fraud and, the most serious, illicit association, as a member, in more than 34 open files.
The legal claims of a large number of local and international savers and investors against the Wenance leadership are well known. It is estimated that more than 3,000 people have been affected.
But, in addition to these civil and criminal trials, the other side of the financial business is being investigated. Those who request loans who, on repeated occasions, were, according to their complaints, scammed and victims of usury.
What happened to Wenance?
The fintech, a technological financial services firm, stopped paying its investors on June 30, alleging a “growth in default due to the country’s economic situation”, an argument that is in the file and that was refuted. Since then, he has open civil and criminal cases in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe and Montevideo.
But at the same time, The CEO of Wenance, Alejadro Muszak and other executives of his firm have been investigated, since 2017, by the investigating prosecutor, Mónica Cuñarro, who has accumulated a large number of complaints from loan takers for usury and fraud.
Wenance is a company that lent money online to unbanked sectors of the population at very high rates that, beyond the country’s financial disaster in recent months and the persistent increase in the reference rate by the authorities of the Central Bank , it was a practice that happened in times when there was more financial stability in the country.
The criminal case being processed by Judge Paula Verónica González, for illicit association, seems to be favorable to Muszak’s interests according to the decision of the Crime Chamber that, against the opinion of prosecutor Cuñarro, granted bail for 175,00,000 of pesos.
In that sense, the judges of Chamber V, Hernán López and Ricardo Pinto, confirmed the decision of substitute judge Paula González, who had been criticized by several complainants against Muszak for not speeding up the investigations.
The complainants filed several complaints for delay of justice because the initial complaints date back to late 2017 and early 2018.
During all that time and until today, the prosecutor, Mónica Cuñarro, continued to accumulate complaints and described the actions of Wenance executives as “a criminal organization” so, in the face of 19 new cases investigated, she reiterated the request for investigations of four responsible for the fintech, in addition to the aforementioned Muszak, the court summoned Santiago Hardie, Gustavo Molas and Paola Vallone who testified on August 9.
The file describes the financial practices against the credit takers. “…the maneuver consisted of granting them a money loan through the signing of a mutual agreement, which would be canceled by automatically debiting the money from their savings accounts in monthly and consecutive installments.”
According to the prosecutor’s office, the interest rates charged by CILSA and then by Wenance were 55%, on average, higher than those in the market. Furthermore, once the loans were paid off, money continued to be debited from the accounts, a fact that, in some cases, determined the total withdrawal of funds from the victims.
Source: Ambito
