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A Message from a Industrialist Deprived of His Liberty
From his prison cell at San Sebastián,
president of Banco Elca, Carlos Alvarado Moya, who is being detained in
preventive detention for three months for alleged fraudulent
administration, fraud and falsifying information, relating to the
activities of Banco Elca, which is currently under supervision of the
Consejo Nacional de Supervisión del Sistema Financiero (Conassif) and
the Superintendencia General de Entidades Financieras (Sugef), he wrote
the following letter, published in the weekly financial newspaper El
Financiero.
The letter was written in Alvarado's native tongue, Spanish and
translated for our readers.
For some years I wrote about economy and finances, I
actively participated in several Costa Rican management organizations of
which I got to be the president, and founded some companies that gave
work and provided economic sustenance to many families. With the support
of my parents, I graduated university with a degree in Economic
Sciences, and in many cases my businesses and management activities
received public recognition as well as from my fellow businessmen.
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Carlos Alvararo Moya, president
of Banco Elca
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I dedicated years to my activities and thought that I had obtained
what I had set to do when I graduated from the University of Costa Rica
and made the decision to be a industrialist.
Today I returned to writing after several years of not doing so, but not
on economic matters, nor of finances, nor of hospitals or health related
matters, nor of the national economy, my usual subjects and articles
which my friends of the press who for many years supported to me and
wrote about my
entrepreneurial and
management activities.
The first lesson
The point of this letter is that instead of writing on a computer
installed in my home or office, I am writing it in a sheet of paper and
from the jail cell where I am deprived of my freedom.
Although it seems difficult to believe, the many years I dedicated to
businesses activities, the hundreds of books that I have read in my life
and my university titles have not taught me as much as these days being
a recluse in a Penitentiary System.
Due to the dedication to my work day, I never paid attention to the
world that surrounds me now nor had I known it. The first great lesson
of these days in the San Sebasti
án
jail is that nothing can be obtained if God is not present.
Before, I did not have enough time each week to complete my work and
much less to dedicate some minutes to think and to contemplate the
wonderful things God has to offer and to the immense mercy and love He
has for each of us.
Some advice I would like to give to businessmen and the other
professionals is that our daily activities should not begin without
first entrusting God and ask of Him for help and to guide us in our
daily work. As businessmen, our actions affect many people, and
therefore with greater determination we must put our faith in God in
fulfilling our responsibilities and actions under His protection.
Perhaps if I had analyzed it before my experience of these days in the
jail, I would have thought like some of you when reading this article.
Now that I have the opportunity to live this experience, I am convinced
that there is nothing else greater and more important that the love and
the mercy of God for us.
Importance of the family
The second great lesson of my stay as a detainee of freedom is the
importance of the time that we dedicate to our family.
In these difficult moments they are who really represent the stimulus to
move forward, and they are the ones who also give the maximum support
when nobody is willing to do so. As a industrialist I committed the
error to reduce the time I dedicated to my family, the time they needed
and deserved, to dedicate greater time to my
entrepreneurial
activities, and I always thought that immersing myself in being a
supplier of the economic sustenance I was fulfilling the role of father
and husband.
Sincerely I do not recommend this philosophy. The family, after God,
must be our center of affection and support, and we do not have to
deteriorate the family relationship to dedicate greater time to
business.
The most important business for any industrialist must be to handle
the family relationship suitably. Nobody can handle companies if he is
not able to handle a suitable familiar relationship. With honesty and
humility I thank God for the wife that I have, for my children, my
parents and my brothers.
The third lesson is the obligation that we have as businessmen to
think about and dedicate part of our personal economic resources, and
that of our companies, to support some activities that benefit those
that need it most. When we become involved in our
entrepreneurial world,
if we forgot that around us exist people who need the same support, I
believe that we are not fulfilling adequately our role of businessmen.
Few people have the capacity to carry out business activities, creating
and developing companies. Therefore, if you are one of these people,
remember that as a special condition of being an industrialist is also
the capacity to offer others the opportunities to rise.
Most important, I believe is not to contribute just with an economic
donation, but to be ready to give an opportunity to anyone, by teaching
them about being productive in the world of business and how to generate
wealth for oneself and for others.
I read of a writer, who wrote that it is more valuable to teach someone
to fish than to give a fish as a gift so that he eats for one day.
True friends, the fourth lesson of these days is that few are the
sincere and close friends.
When one is successful, most of our friends and people connected to us
are ready to share in our achievements, but when the situation changes,
only the true friends persist in the relationship.
This is not new for anyone and perhaps the only thing that is due to
reinforce is the decision to give our priorities to those who really are
worthy of it.
The main strength to be and remain successful for many years in
business, in an extremely competitive field that does not pardon errors,
is to take into account that although the business life requires of many
extraordinary actions of the industrialist, acting in the surroundings
of the businesses, we cannot lose sight of some of the priorities to
which I make reference in this letter.
I hope that my comments stimulate a reflection about the true activities
that have value in the world of business and thus to impart a new
teaching.
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