BANKER Eduardo Masferrer, cousin of Cuban capo Rolando Masferrer, an accomplice of Jorge Mas Canosa, money laundering specialist and former star of the Miami pro-Batista circles, who preached in favor of a Mafiosi "transition" is facing 300 years’ imprisonment for a series of giant frauds, according to the Miami District Attorney’s Office.

The ex-president and director of the Hamilton Bank, who prided himself on his vision of "another" Cuba, was found guilty on 16 charges of fraud. The cousin of one of the most infamous killers for the Batista dictatorship, whose bloody gang – the Masferrer Tigers – was possibly the pioneer paramilitary group in the America, was the last criminal within the institution to be accused of fraud, after two others had pleaded guilty.

According to El Nuevo Herald, from 1998-99, Masferrer and his accomplices "fraudulently inflated reports on the results of operations and the financial situation of the Hamilton Bancorp (the headquarters of the bank), thus defrauding investors and bank and stock market regulations."

"The good results allowed the group to enrich itself and unduly benefit from higher salaries, bonds and the purchase of shares, and the executive board also planned the sale of various loans that the bank had in Russia, inflating their prices when that country was in moratorium and had devalued its currency," the daily details, quoting the prosecution.

Masferrer was accused of fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, among other crimes. The court is to pronounce sentence on the banker in June.

Born in Cuba and resident in Miami, on October 31, 2001, ex-president Mireya Moscoso, the same woman who pardoned Luis Posada Carriles, granted Masferrer Panamanian nationality via Resolution 220 of the Panamanian government, on order to benefit his fraudulent operations.

He appeared on the Miami financial scenario when he bought $4.4 million in shares from the Hamilton Bancorp Inc. while he was general manager of the bank in Panama.

On January 11, 2002, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a federal agency that directs the U.S. banking system, intervened in the Hamilton Bank after having investigated numerous irregularities dating back to 1998 that confirmed ill will and a lack of transparency on the part of the administrators to solve the problems identified in various inspections.

In March 2002, the OCC prohibited the bank from engaging in new transactions with 33 companies or persons… including Manuel Salermo Cohen, the consul general of Panama in Miami and former director and president of the Alexander H. Cos company, owned by Masferrer, who controls or signs 26 different accounts in the bank.

Panama’s La Prensa daily had access to the dossier and revealed that the OCC investigators concluded: "There are an abundance of unmonitored suspect activities that suggest money laundering.

In January 1959, while Fulgencio Batista was seeking refuge in the Dominican Republic, his henchmen were received with open arms on the Miami docks and, according to information later collected by investigators, carrying no less than $424 million from the Republic’s treasury.