The National Court has sentenced to the former director general of the extinct Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo (CAM) Roberto López Abad and the former CEO of companies, Daniel Gil, to two years in prison for real estate business with Valfensal in the Caribbean, which caused the entity a loss of 28 million.
In a ruling known this Tuesday, the first section of the Criminal Chamber ratifies the conformity agreement reached by the administrators of Valfensal, Juan Vicente Ferri and José Salvador Baldó, those who sentenced to another two years in prison as “inducers” of unfair administration and three crimes against the Public Treasury.
The cause stems from the complaint filed in 2012 by the Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGD), which in its brief stated that “with the knowledge and consent of López Abad y Gil, funds were diverted for the benefit of Ferri and Baldó, its Valfensal partners, thanks to a policy of opacity and lack of transparency that generated a provision of 28 million euros “.
The magistrates consider that it has been “fully accredited “that the CAM suffered” very serious damage as a consequence of the fraudulent actions of the accused “, who carried out a management “negligent through a series of risky operations in view of market circumstances “.
In this regard, he argues that these operations “must be framed within the intervention of the CAM by the Bank of Spain”, which they attribute to the negligence of the excupula, which forced the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) to inject money public to “alleviate” the situation.
The sentence, of which Judge Jesús Eduardo Gutiérrez has been the speaker, qualifies as illicit various purchase operations, such as the Hotel Caracol, located in the Riviera maya (Mexico) for 60.4 million dollars, and of which there is no “report on the investment proposal” that the CAM, TIP real estate holding should have made.
Likewise, it sees “significant” the expert evidence prepared by the Bank of Spain, according to which the inspection of the 2008 cash register “revealed the lack of control of credit and liquidity risks, whose management had critical deficiencies. “
In fact, the report claimed that credit risk management “was subject to the interests of the partner or those of the savings bank, having incurred in bad banking practices”, a “personalist” line for which López Abad and Gil were held responsible.
In this line the judges pronounce themselves, who understand that it was both who led “in fact, although not in law” the administration of the CAM, negotiating “directly” with the legal representatives of Valfensal.
In this way, López Abad and Gil “studied” such operations, always at the initiative of Ferri and Baldó, who stated what type of operation, what type of financing and what amount it should have “.
This “personalistic management “ It made the procedures “always” subject to the decision and the “approval” of the then general director of the savings bank and its director of companies, reducing the Board of Directors to a “merely formal action”.
Therefore, the court condemns both to two years in prison and five years of disqualification, as perpetrators responsible for a crime of unfair administration to which the undue delays of the case apply as mitigating factors.
About Ferri and Baldó, confirms six months in prison for unfair administration and another six months for each of the three crimes against the Public Treasury of the years 2009, 2010 and 2013, of which they were accused; both must pay in addition a fine of more than three million euros.
In relation to the civil liability, the four will have to pay jointly and severally to the FGD 28 million euros in concept of the damage caused, from which the 12.5 million already consigned by the administrators of Valfensal will be deducted.
Gil is precisely one of the four defendants who these days sit on the bench of the National High Court for the debt restructuring of the promoter Hansa Urbana real estate in 2011, that would have caused a damage to the cash of 37.7 million. In this case, both the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office and the FGD request for them four years in prison.
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