Azteca Bank Says It Has a $50 Million-a-Week Cash Problem
- Mexico authorities have failed to help local banks, CEO says
- U.S., Mexico need to find way for banks to offload dollars
Billionaire Ricardo Salinas’s Banco Azteca and other Mexican banks are facing increasing problems offloading the physical U.S. dollars they accumulate from normal business, and Mexican authorities have failed to help solve the issue, the bank’s chief executive officer said.
Banco Azteca, part of Salinas’s flagship appliance dealer Grupo Elektra, is accumulating around $50 million in U.S. currency across its network of branches every week, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Alejandro Valenzuela said in an interview. Azteca is having an increasingly difficult time returning those dollars in bulk shipments to the U.S., he said. American banks are afraid of facing big fines from U.S. regulators, even though Azteca has put in a sophisticated system to prove that its dollars come from legitimate business at its stores and bank branches, he said.