Grupo Klu’s pursuit of BanFeliz is reopening questions about a 2016 US federal fraud case that ended with a Manhattan prison sentence and the forfeiture of a Mexican bank.
A pending Mexican bank acquisition is drawing fresh scrutiny from regulators and the financial press, with one of the country’s leading business outlets pointing to a US criminal record that traces back nearly a decade.
Grupo Klu, the fintech group led by Alberto Djemal, has been gathering investors to pursue the purchase of BanFeliz, a small Mexican bank tied to Happy Inc., according to a May 18 column in El Ceo. The Mexican business publication reported that financial sources believe Alberto Djemal’s father, Carlos Djemal Nehmad, retains influence around the transaction, a development the outlet framed as a potential return of the family to the Mexican banking system.
That history is what is now drawing renewed attention in the US press.
A Manhattan Federal Case Dating to 2016
In November 2016, Carlos Djemal Nehmad was arrested in Chicago and charged in Manhattan federal court in connection with what prosecutors described as a years-long scheme to defraud the Mexican government through fraudulent value-added tax refunds. The case was brought by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and announced by then-US Attorney Preet Bharara, alongside Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS Criminal Investigation division.
Prosecutors alleged that from June 2011 through May 2016, Djemal and five co-defendants moved more than $100 million through dozens of shell companies in the United States and Mexico. The scheme, according to the indictment, involved purchasing outdated cellular phones through front companies, then circulating them between Mexico and the US to generate falsified export invoices and claim inflated VAT refunds from Mexican tax authorities.
In September 2017, Djemal pleaded guilty to wire fraud before US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped related money laundering charges. He was sentenced in May 2018 to 75 months in federal prison, just over six years, and ordered to forfeit cash, artwork, and his shareholdings in InvestaBank, the Mexican bank in which he had been a 25 percent owner.
Court records show Djemal was released and transferred to Mexican immigration authorities in Ciudad Juarez in November 2020. A final order of forfeiture was entered against him in January 2023.
The InvestaBank Arc
El Ceo’s column drew a line from that case to the present one. InvestaBank was established in 2014 after a group of Mexican investors acquired Royal Bank of Scotland’s operations in Mexico and rebranded the institution. After Djemal’s 2016 arrest, the bank distanced itself from him while the CNBV and the Finance Ministry kept the banking license active and the ownership structure was reconfigured.
The institution later passed to Moisés Cosío and operated for several years as Accendo Banco before the CNBV revoked its license in September 2021.
What’s at Stake for The CNBV
El Ceo characterized the BanFeliz bid as a test of the Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores’ due diligence standards on reputational and financial history. The column noted that Mexican banking licenses have repeatedly changed hands among business groups following judicial or financial pressure, often under the banner of preserving operational continuity.
Grupo Klu was authorized by the CNBV as an electronic payment fund institution in 2023 and operates a payments platform for small and medium-sized businesses. According to disclosures cited by Mexican press, the company has built up contributed capital of roughly 1.08 billion pesos against accumulated losses of about 418 million pesos.
Whether the regulator approves a change of control at BanFeliz, and on what conditions, is now the question Mexican financial observers say will define the next phase of the story. Neither Grupo Klu nor representatives for the Djemal family responded publicly to questions about the family’s role in the proposed transaction at the time the El Ceo column was published.
