Luis Álvarez Renta

On July 16, 2008 L.A.R. was sent to the prison at Najayo, San Cristóbal (south), to begin serving a 10-year prison sentence.

After being found liable in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in November 2005, Álvarez Renta expressed that he blames former Baninter president Baez Figueroa for the colossal fraud that brought down the bank and all but decimated the Dominican economy in 2003. Álvarez Renta, who has been closely associated with the banking collapse, claimed he had no part in it and that Ramon Baez Figueroa and his deputy Marcos Baez Cocco were those responsible. Proceedings in the Dominican Republic began on April 3, 2006 against Baninter's former president Ramon Báez Figueroa and the executives Vivian Lubrano and Marcos Báez Cocco, Luis Álvarez Renta and Jesus Maria Ferrúa. The defense is headed by the famed attorney Marino Vinicio Castillo, whose primary argument is that the authorities under Mejia's presidency (2000–2004) caused the bank's collapse.

On April 7, 2006 the Dominican Government announced it would offer legal and psychological support to former Miss Dominican Republic 1987, Carmen Rita Perez Pellerano, in her demand that her ex-husband, Álvarez Renta, stop harassing her and that she be awarded custody of their daughter. Álvarez-Renta won the case on the note that Ms. Perez was declared psychologically unfit to take care of their, at the time, 7-year-old daughter.

Prior to the Baninter banking scandal, Álvarez Renta had accompanied former Dominican President Hipólito Mejía on many of his trips abroad, and was appointed ambassador to France on April 2, 2003. He decided to accept the appointment as part of his retirement, in order to effect positive change for the country by helping it negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.

In response to the announcement, Álvarez Renta took out full-page advertisements in the press, in which he declared he was innocent of all the charges made by the Central Bank. He also claimed to have ended his dealings with Baninter almost two years before its failure in 2003. Álvarez Renta was the only Dominican businessperson who is mentioned by name in the Central Bank report. The report said that overdrafts and loans totaling RD$3.83 billion were erased at the start of this year in favor of the company Bankinvest, S.A., presided and managed by Luis Álvarez Renta.

As such, Álvarez Renta essentially created the marketplace for mergers and acquisitions in the Caribbean region, and became very wealthy in the process. An estimate of his wealth made during his divorce case in 2000 placed it at $148 million, although many believed it to be much more than that at the time.

Luis Álvarez Renta (born April 9, 1950) is a Dominican economist. Álvarez Renta was found liable by a federal jury in Miami of civil racketeering and illegal money transfers in a conspiracy to loot Baninter bank during its final months of existence in 2003, for which Álvarez Renta was ordered to pay $177 million to Dominican authorities in November 2005.