2023-11-03 23:26:04
BBVA has achieved the objective of ensuring that the investigation into the Villarejo case stops amplifying the damage to its reputation with the decision of the National Court not to continue with the investigation. The entity remains under investigation, but the Criminal Chamber has corrected the last extension issued by the judge in the case, Manuel García Castellón, as the bank had requested.
The Villarejo case weakens with the exoneration of the most powerful and the acquittal of the commissioner for bribery
The first effect of the revocation of the order, by which the investigation was extended until January 2024, is that the witness statement of the current president of the entity, Carlos Torres, is void as it was agreed upon within the extension period. voided.
The decision of the Criminal Chamber, a court higher than the investigating judge, has upset the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. The prosecutors in the case have resorted to an unusual formula, and even more so coming from the Public Ministry, consisting of submitting a document denouncing the violation of effective judicial protection.
Piece 9 of the Tándem (or Villarejo) case is dedicated to investigating the alleged assignment that BBVA gave to Cenyt, one of the commissioner’s companies, to spy on businessmen, politicians and journalists when it was active. The investigator of the case, Manuel García Castellón, estimates the suspicious payments of the second banking entity in the country to the retired commissioner at 10.2 million.
That piece was secretly opened in December 2018. Since then, senior executives and former directors have been charged, including Francisco González, former president of the entity. The bank became a defendant, as a legal entity, in July 2019. In December of that same year, the legal representative of the entity, Adolfo Fraguas, recognized in the National Court the existence of payments from BBVA to Cenyt until December 2017. This means that Villarejo was collecting from the second largest banking entity in the country even in prison – he was arrested a month before – and a long time after his involvement in dark affairs became known, including the possession of a millionaire patrimony in tax havens. .
The exculpation of the Ibex
The BBVA piece is the last trace of the Ibex in the Villarejo case, where Repsol and Iberdrola have been charged as legal entities, as have their CEOs. All of these accusations have been declining by decision of the investigating judge, Manuel García Castellón, and against the criteria of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Subsequently, the Criminal Court has agreed with the magistrate.
The judge’s criterion has been to cut the responsibility of the security directors of large companies, in most cases former colleagues of Villarejo in the National Police Corps who resigned from public service for stratospheric contracts. The large entities defend that they could only turn to them as security experts, but in police areas the idea is established that a high command of the Corps is more useful because of the contacts they leave inside than because of their experience.
In the case of BBVA, Julio Corrochano is accused, who had become the head of the Judicial Police in Spain, that is, in charge of all investigations of the National Police against organized crime, drug trafficking or corruption. The audios published about his conversations with Villarejo denote the friendship that both maintained and how his superiors at the bank knew the work he did.
This is evident in an audio by Villarejo published by The confidential which, in part due to the closure of the investigation ordered by the Criminal Chamber, cannot be incorporated into the case. In the recording, the security director, Corrochano, reproaches Villarejo for having included “harassment” in the plan presented to the bank to collect a debt from Fernando Martín (Fadesa). “There is a paragraph that scares the hell out of you, that talks about harassment and I don’t know what,” the BBVA Security Director reproaches Villarejo.
The conversation alludes to the knowledge that BBVA’s legal services have of Villarejo’s work. “They are scared out of their wits: ‘How can you write that… Damn, if this comes out and BBVA is… (…) which is that these are jurists (…) That you have to know who you have to write things to,” Corrochano says to Villarejo.
The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office considers that “the facts” have shown that there are new proceedings that are “relevant, useful and necessary” and that the decision of the Criminal Chamber represents “an express limitation of the instructor to direct the investigation procedure.” .
The statement of the president of BBVA annulled
Anti-Corruption requested the testimony of Carlos Torres as a witness after María Jesús Arribas, director of its legal services, had refused to testify during his appearance as a witness. She had been summoned for her alleged knowledge of the entity’s hiring of Villarejo, but she defended that she was protected by the right to professional secrecy because she is, in turn, a lawyer for the entity. But Torres’ option was requested and accepted by the judge after the order to extend the proceedings that the Criminal Court has annulled.
Before the judge, Torres disassociated himself from the contracts that the bank signed with the police officer and stated that he only became aware of them from “June or July” 2018, despite the fact that the first press reports appeared published in May. of that year and that he had been CEO since 2015. He replaced Francisco González as president of the entity in January 2019.
Other procedures considered key by the Prosecutor’s Office were not carried out. This is the case of BBVA’s response to the request to identify the providers officers (responsible for regulatory compliance at the bank) from the creation of the position until 2018 and who were assigned to bribery, privacy and corruption-related crimes. The court also asked that BBVA detail the versions it has maintained about ‘Special Christmas Attentions’ within its regulations between 2004 and 2018.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested that a legal representative of the bank appear before the court clerk to “record the decision of the legal entity under investigation in relation to its willingness to collaborate.” Prosecutors believe that there is an “obvious contradiction” in the fact that BBVA conveys “a collaborative desire while taking advantage of its right not to testify,” as happened in the case of its Director of Legal Services.
Turk’s heads
Both Corrochano and the former Risk Director Antonio Béjar feel they are scapegoats of the investigation. Béjar was the only one fired due to the explosion of the case, compensated with 1.7 million euros. Before the court, his defense has presented a document in which he exposes internal communications that implicate more managers in the hiring of Cenyt and that demonstrate that the commissioner’s work for BBVA allowed assets to be recovered for the entity.
The incorporation of the recording between Corrochano and Villarejo was requested by Antonio Béjar’s defense, but agreed by the judge already in the period for which the Criminal Chamber annuls the instruction, so the lawyer of the former head of Risks of the BBVA alleges defenselessness and joins the Anti-Corruption theses when it denounces violation of effective judicial protection.
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