Victor Vargas

Vargas and BOD’s goal was to expand the American Express card to 300,000 cardholders with access to 46,000 businesses by 2013. The card would offer a 4-year rotating term financing option.

On June 23, 2015, Vargas was named "Latin America Entrepreneur of the Year" by business magazine The Executive. Concepción Dancausa, one of Spain's delegates to the European Union’s Committee of the Regions, personally gave the award to Vargas at a ceremony in Marid. According to Latin Business Daily, Vargas received the award "for his leadership role in driving economic growth, job creation, and expansion of wealth in Latin America."

On September 1, 2015, Vargas told The Telegraph that he was planning to start a league in the Dominican Republic. Recently, Vargas had moved the headquarters of his club from England to Spain. When asked why, he explained the decision was simple: the rain. "We've played for five weeks here in Spain and had no rain."

In 2014, Vargas and BOD partnered with American Express to provide a new credit product for microentrepreneurs. Microentrepreneurs provide for 15 percent of the Venezuelan economy.

In May 2013, it was alleged that Vargas purchased Cadena Capriles, with its criticism of the Venezuelan government declining afterward.

Vargas served as the technical director of the Venezuelan Olympic Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. On July 20, 2012, Vargas led a delegation from Venezuela to meet with the Olympics’ Organizing Committee and to inspect the Olympic Village in London.

In 2010, overall profitability on bank assets in Venezuela fell to 9.7 percent from 20.5 percent in 2009. Venezuelan bankers were concerned that the Venezuelan Central Bank had not changed commission tariffs in over five years. Vargas served as the leader of the National Bank Board and led discussions with the Superintendencia de Bancos. Vargas proposed that the Central Bank create new requirements for giving loans to strategic sectors as opposed to the then-current law requiring compulsory loan portfolios.

On June 21, 2009, twenty-one of his horses died suddenly during a polo tournament in Palm Beach, Florida. The Lechuza Argentine captain, Juan Martín Nero believed the cause to be tainted Biodyl, a vitamin supplement given to horses to ward off exhaustion, as five of the horses that did not receive it were unaffected. Lechuza was runner-up in the 2009 CV Whitney Cup and won the Cup in 2011.

In 2008, Vargas' bank, Banco Occidental de Descuento (BOD), agreed to buy Banco de Venezuela from its then-owner, Spanish bank Banco Santander. Vargas and his bank officials met with the appropriate finance officials in the Venezuelan government, and the officials approved the purchase. Vargas's BOD then put a $700 million down payment toward the purchase. Soon after, President Hugo Chavez went on national TV and announced he was pushing BOD aside and buying the bank himself, on behalf of the Venezuelan government. BOD lost the $700 million deposit. Banco Santander refused to refund it. A Spanish court ordered the refund, but Spain's equivalent of the Supreme Court overturned that order. Through it all, a 2008 Wall Street Journal article characterized Vargas and Venezuela's other wealthy elites as having "durability...no matter who is in power." Vargas was later assisted by the Venezuelan government for abiding by their policies during the Venezuelan banking crisis of 2009–10, when more than a half-dozen competing private banking institutions were closed.

In 1992 he sold a small bank he founded and owned. He used those funds a year later, in 1993, to buy Banco Occidental de Descuento, based in the oil-rich state of Zulia. Many of his clients are oil investors. Another form of revenue comes from purchasing sovereign debt bonds and re-selling them for profit to investors. As of 2015, it was the 14th largest private bank in Venezuela. He serves as its Vice-President.

In the 1980s, he acquired 2% of CapitalBanc Corp., a bank based in New York City. The bank was closed down in the early 1990s after authorities discovered fraud involving Vargas. He was charged and accused of fraud. He is quoted describing the venture as "the worst business" of his life. He shared his experience in October 2007 when he moderated a panel on corporate governance at a Miami conference of the Florida International Bankers Association and the Latin American Banks Federation.

Victor Vargas (born 28 March 1952) is a Venezuelan banker and businessman, best known for being the owner and president of the 14th largest private bank in Venezuela, Banco Occidental de Descuento.