WILLEMSTAD - The Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS), on June 15, 2015, filed a criminal complaint against former banker Eric Garcia and others in connection with the Giro Bank. The local Dutch newspaper Antilliaans Dagblad says it has the complaint.

The Dutch newspaper reported under the heading "The of CBCS never filed a complaint" that the spokesperson of the Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced that a complaint was never received from the Central Bank CBCS against former bank director Garcia. The spokesman did this after having checked this again with the chief public prosecutor. That appears to be a mistake. The newspaper says it has been incorrectly informed.

Both the spokesperson and chief officer Heiko de Jong says that they regret what had happened. Report “A complained has been filed.”

The Antilliaans Dagblad says that they asked two weeks ago, on Friday, February 7, for a response to a statement by former Central Bank President Emsley Tromp in a speech earlier that week for students of the Inter-Continental University of the Caribbean (ICUC) in Curaçao. He had stated that the CBCS filed a complaint in 2015 against former Giro bank director Garcia. According to Tromp, this was supported by an extensive forensic investigation.

“Until today, the reason for the OM not taking action is a mystery to me,” he said. The newspaper then mailed the spokesman of the OM the following message: "We would particularly appreciate it - given the great social importance of the Giro issue and its impact - if the OM really mentioned something about this.

Such as the question whether (at the time) a fact-finding investigation has been initiated and what this has yielded and whether this has led to a criminal investigation, etc.”

The spokesman of the OM said that he had made "a big mistake". He had "misunderstood" the Chief Officer’s response.

“A complaint has been filed, but we do not make any further statements about it.”

This newspaper again asked for the status but did not receive a reply. Two criminal complaints were filed in mid-June 2015. That was done by Huizing & Huizing Advocaten (lawyers).

The documents were addressed to the chief public prosecutor De Jong. These were partly based on research reports from Forensic Services Caribbean (FSC) in April that year. The OM received those reports.

According to the complaint, Garcia and others were repeatedly guilty of infringing Giro Bank's internal mandate regulation and were repeatedly guilty of the criminal acts of forgery, scam and embezzlement.