Banco Fassil S.A. (en intervención)

What it is

Banco Fassil was a Bolivian bank headquartered in Santa Cruz de la Sierra — at its peak, one of the largest in the country, with a dense presence in Santa Cruz and broad national reach. Among Bolivia’s eleven full-service banks it ranked third by loan book (BOB 20,984m, ~USD 2.13bn), fourth by deposits (BOB 20,112m, ~USD 2.04bn) and fourth by total assets (BOB 31,438m, ~USD 3.19bn) as of end-2022.

It was founded on 12 August 1996 as a private financial fund focused on small- and micro-enterprise lending, before later converting into a full bank. That conversion to a full “banco múltiple” came in 2014.

Who owns it

At 31 December 2022, five shareholders were listed: Santa Cruz FG Sociedad Controladora S.A. held the dominant stake at 69.05%, Santa Cruz Financial Group S.A. held 28.90%, Santa Cruz Asset Management 2.04%, and two other entities each held a nominal single share. Santa Cruz FG Sociedad Controladora was itself 99.9995% owned by Santa Cruz Financial Group (SCFG) — meaning the SCFG network effectively controlled the entire institution.

SCFG had built itself into a diversified conglomerate spanning a brokerage, an investment-fund manager, an insurer, real-estate, technology, education, and marketing firms — all while Fassil’s liquidity was quietly deteriorating.

Who runs it

The bank’s chief executive and board chairman was Juan Ricardo Mertens Olmos, who was arrested on the night of 25 April 2023 on charges of financial crimes, alongside three other senior executives. Mertens also appears in ASFI’s records as the bank’s principal legal representative.

In February 2025, Mertens was evacuated from Palmasola prison after suffering a cardiac arrest.

ASFI director Reynaldo Yujra appointed Luis Gonzalo Araoz Leaño as state-appointed interventor (administrator) in June 2023, after the original interventor died in unexplained circumstances. Araoz holds a degree in economics and finance from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, with specialisation in financial management.

No CFO or independent board chair is disclosed in available sources for the current intervention period.

The money, in plain words

By 14 April 2023, the bank could not cover BOB 2,246m (~USD 228m) in obligations to customers and other institutions — a classic liquidity failure where it had lent out more than it could return on demand. The ASFI director called it “the first time in Bolivia’s history” that a bank of Fassil’s size had been seized and its deposits and loan book put up for competitive tender among rival lenders.

After the seizure, net interest income — a bank’s core earnings from lending — collapsed by 85.84% in 2023, and total assets shrank by 80.81% as deposits and loans were transferred out. Separately, investigators revealed that Mertens personally received monthly directors’ fees of USD 45,000 from Fassil and a further USD 60,000 from SCFG’s holding companies — while the bank was unable to meet depositor withdrawals.

What it is doing now

ASFI assigned roughly half of Fassil’s deposits and loan book to eight of Bolivia’s eleven commercial banks; a state-managed trust (fideicomiso) administered by Banco Unión holds the remaining half of accounts, assets and liabilities. A year on from the seizure, more than 3,000 former staff were still pursuing legal claims for unpaid bonuses worth several million dollars.

As recently as 2024, asset swap contracts were still being signed between Banco Ganadero and the Fassil intervention trust, swapping credit portfolios in both directions as part of the clean-up. Final licence revocation — the formal legal death of the institution — will come when ASFI revokes Fassil’s operating licence, a step that remained pending as of mid-2025.

What to watch

• Licence revocation: When ASFI formally cancels Fassil’s charter, the entity ceases to exist legally — triggering final asset sales and closing the books on what the regulator described as Bolivia’s largest-ever bank failure.
• Criminal proceedings: Prosecutors had placed travel alerts and asset freezes on eleven former Fassil executives under investigation for issuing large unsecured loans. Verdicts will test whether Bolivia’s courts hold financial insiders accountable.
• Central-bank refusal: Fassil had sought an emergency liquidity loan from the Banco Central de Bolivia (BCB) — reported at around USD 73m — which the BCB denied after evaluation, a decision that former staff say accelerated the collapse. How regulators interpret this episode will shape Bolivia’s future crisis-management playbook.
• Worker claims: More than 3,000 ex-employees — about 70% of Fassil’s total workforce of 4,600 at intervention — remain in litigation over unpaid year-end bonuses. The outcome will affect whether the intervention trust has enough remaining assets to settle.

This is news, not investment advice.