• 'Villarejo case'.BBVA is charged in the' Villarejo case 'for breaching its code of conduct
  • 'Villarejo Case'. The National Court imputes former BBVA president Francisco González for payments to Villarejo

The Department of Legal Services of BBVA has sent a letter to Judge Manuel García-Castellón , to which EL MUNDO has had access, in which he reveals that on numerous occasions the financial entity has received threats from officials of the Forces and Bodies of State security to illegally and without judicial order provide confidential information for countless clients.

"There are not a few cases in which the different police bodies have expressed their disagreement with our request to contribute from the judicial office," admit the lawyers of the bank. "Even asking us for the personal identification of the BBVA employee who has been required by said judicial office in order to open the corresponding police / judicial proceedings."

The instructor of the so-called 'Tandem case' , in which retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and other senior officers are investigated for selling police information to large businessmen, required BBVA a few days ago to detail what their protocols are in this area.

Its objective is to determine if the criminal responsibility in these episodes lies with the bank for relaxing the controls or if, on the contrary, it is limited exclusively to isolated employees acting on their own.

The decision was taken by Judge García-Castellón after proving that workers of the financial institution had provided bank account data - arriving to make screenshots of deposits - to prominent members of the Police who, immediately after, marketed the information in the sector private through security companies linked to them.

In this line, to cite an example, a former employee of the entity, César Bilbao , has already confessed that he leaked confidential data to the inspector Constancio Riaño , who has emerged in the cause as one of the key people in the handling and filtration of information sensitive from his position in the General Information Commission of the National Police.

Extended practice

This modus operandi was detected in connection with the illegal transfer of data from the Balder IP Law firm, created by former employees of the Herrero y Asociados law firm. The owners of the latter firm hired Villarejo with the objective of investigating the former in case he had been able to incur unfair competition.

However, despite the fact that the investigations on these facts are limited to one of the pieces of the summary, the one called Iron , during the last weeks the leakage of confidential banking or telephone information from the police databases for later sale by part of senior managers with private companies has been revealed as an extended and practically institutionalized practice within the National Police Corps.

Thus, in relation to what was pointed out by BBVA that the information requirements were carried out without a court order and under the threat of opening an investigation against the employee who refused have been numerous, Riaño himself confessed recently that he leaked data to Antonio González Pacheco , popularly known as Billy El Niño .

Paradoxically, this historic member of the Social Political Brigade investigated for torture on countless occasions, also had a security company with which he had a turnover of 1.9 million between 2002 and 2016.

Judicial authorization

BBVA has made it clear in its response to the judge that the law requires that "when information is requested regarding movements and / or contractual documentation or a list of positions of a particular client is requested, the corresponding office of the court".

Moreover, it must "request such information or authorize the Judicial Police to make" the request. Because "in the event that a third party's information is provided to their customers, the reserve obligation regarding balances, positions, transactions and other operations thereof would be breached."

In the framework of the investigation into the illegal traffic of bank data, the defense of one of the imputed commanders, Enrique García-Castaño , has already requested the judge to request from the Police all the emails of the inspector Riaño to emerge in a way exhaustive all the consultations that he carried out without mediating the mandatory judicial order at the request of police officers who profited with security companies.

BBVA is being investigated in this summary, in addition, for hiring Villarejo to investigate the group led by Luis del Rivero who tried to gain control of the financial entity. For this espionage the judge has already agreed that the bank has the status of investigated in the procedure and has just agreed the imputation of former President Francisco González.

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