Sounds suitably weird; still, who’s this billionaire?

Meet Jaime Rosenthal, from Honduras.

Is he farming crocodiles?

There you go! Yes, he is. In fact, he owns a herd of 11,000 cattle, too.

A farmer billionaire! Quite a combo.

Well, to be fair, Rosenthal wears many hats. He is a banker and runs several other businesses — around 20, declares the alumni website of Massachusetts Institute of Technology from where the tycoon graduated in 1958.

But why talk about him now?

It seems the Rosenthals have rubbed the US Treasury Department the wrong way. Last week, the Treasury Department indicted 79-year-old Rosenthal along with his son Yani and nephew Yankel, who is a former minister of investment and president of the Club Deportivo Marathon football team.

What are the charges?

The Treasury says the Hondurans laundered money for drug traffickers. It has placed sanctions on the family’s holdings. Authorities even arrested Yankel in Miami. Rosenthals have a fortune of $690 million. Their key concerns include Banco Continental, which has about $500 million in assets. They also have stakes in a cement company, Inversiones Bicon; and a telco, Cable Color.

But is this arrest important?

Rosenthal is not your run-of-the-mill millionaire. He was the vice-president of Honduras during 1986-89, and has held close ties with the US. A fan of legendary investor Warren Buffett, Rosenthal has said he followed Buffett’s investment strategies. But the US indictment shows he seems to have amended the strategies and gone a few extra miles to do business with Cachiros, a powerful drug trafficking clan in the region.

Was there any action against the Rosenthals in Honduras?

Just a few days ago, following the Treasury indictment, Honduras’ banking commission ordered Banco Continental to liquidate. Banco forms the biggest pie in Rosenthal’s business empire. The company must now return deposits to more than 220,000 clients. Now the future of Rosenthal’s conglomerate Grupo Continental is uncertain. The group has interests in cement, construction, leather, financial services, cattle, agro-industrial projects, crocodile skins, tourism, cable TV and media.

Interesting. But other wealthy families in Latin America may not like such moves.

Indeed. Reports suggest that the US charges have shocked the elite in Honduras and other trouble-hit, unstable countries in the region. The region’s wealthy with bad money seem to be having a bad time of late, especially with as a series of corruption investigations sweeping across the region from Brazil to Guatemala.

I know; in Guatemala, the President has lost his job.

Yes. Last month, President Otto Perez Molina had to leave office over corruption allegations. His vice-president and central bank chief also went to prison.

Latin America is known for its corrupt businesses and their ugly ties with politics. The region usually gets lower ratings on Transparency International’s annual corruption perception index. Recently, Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras reported $2.1 billion in losses to bribes and graft.

Rosenthals’ Honduras is Latin America’s third most crooked country, according to Insight Crime . It loses 19 per cent of its GDP to violence.

So, one hopes the move against the Rosenthals might signal some positive changes.

If you know the history of the region, you won’t hope much.

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