• Banking Who is who in the Villarejo-BBVA case?

The Prosecutor's Office asked the

National Court

a few days ago to

extend the investigation into the contracts between former commissioner

José Manuel Villarejo

and

BBVA

.

But the Anti-Corruption brief goes beyond a mere request to the investigating judge.

The prosecutors in the case take advantage of the process to

harshly reproach the bank's attitude

in the investigation and to point to the responsibility of its current managers.

"The foregoing," says the Prosecutor's Office after listing various data from the investigation, "places the irregularities in the highest levels of bank executives, executives who, on the other hand, remain at present and are those who direct the position procedural collaboration of the entity ». The italics are from the prosecutors.

The Prosecutor's Office recognizes that

BBVA, as a defendant, has no obligation to collaborate, but considers that the bank is going further

. «The existing legal configuration, as well as BBVA's status as a legal entity under investigation, prevents it from being required to present the data, since it is protected by its right of defense, but nothing prevents - on the contrary, it is obliged - to leave constancy of the lack of collaboration, and not because it is obliged to collaborate, but because in all the papers presented it affirms its willingness to collaborate which, as has been exposed, is, if not totally uncertain, biased and interested.

This lack of collaboration is linked to one of the proceedings that the Prosecutor's Office requests from Judge Manuel García Castellón and which explains that the investigation must be extended for another six months.

Prosecutors Miguel Serrano and Alejandro Cabaleiro

want the current head of communication for the bank, Paul Tobin, to be summoned to testify as a defendant

.

The reason is that in the statement of a defendant it came to light that, when the relationship of the entity and the commissioner became publicly known, the manager decided to

create a folder in the cloud

"to 'collect the information' that may exist in the entity regarding the contracts with Cenyt [the Villarejo company] ».

The Prosecutor's Office questioned the matter in that interrogation and BBVA interrupted to explain that it would provide the content of that digital folder. But

in what was delivered to the court "there is no record" of the folder or the metadata that would allow their activity to be traced

and check, for example, "if there was a deletion of any file."

The Prosecutor's Office mentions other examples of the lack of collaboration and in some cases

considers BBVA's justification "surprising"

. As the size appeals to what is claimed. “Precisely due to the size and importance of the entity, there are more means to carry out an orderly management, it is simply inconceivable that an entity such as BBVA appeals to the loss of documents that, without any doubt, should be in its possession , both physically and informally ».

The letter closes with a reference to the former president of the entity, Francisco González. He requests to be informed that

his accusation extends to an alleged crime of unfair administration

, "having used the entity's resource for his exclusively personal use." They refer to the request to the Villarejo company to assess the acquisition of a farm in which González was interested in a private capacity.

González was already asked about it at the Hearing

.

He explained that he did not remember the specific matter, but that he saw reasonable having asked his personal secretary to verify the public access data of the registry.

And he added that, if later the head of the bank's real estate area asked Villarejo's partner to investigate further, that was no longer his initiative.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Jose Manuel Villarejo

  • National audience

  • Castellon

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Courts The National Court also imputes Iberdrola Renovables for the Villarejo case

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