Judiciary. Cartoon of 30/10/2022 in CTXT
The National High Court acquitted Rodrigo Rato of charges of defrauding investors and false accounting for the disastrous flotation of Bankia, which was finally nationalised in 2011. Rato resigned from the presidency of Bankia in May 2012.
The judgement of the Criminal Division of the Audiencia de la Audiencia also acquits 33 other defendants and entities, including Bankia.
According to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Bankia’s flotation on the stock exchange was one of the biggest swindles the Spanish public prosecutor’s office says the Bankia IPO was notorious in Spain for its size, number of people affected and impact on the economy, but that’s the marketrodrigo said
The experts of the Bank of Spain the Bankia stock market flotation was also described as fraudulent and the biggest banking scam in Spain.
The bailout of Bankia in 2012, whereby the government came to own 61.8% of the bank through the FROB, involved an injection of between €24bn and €55bn of public aid that has still not been repaid and will probably never be recovered
Ten years later, only some 2.61 billion euros had been recovered, while the banks’ corporate profits continue to rise unabated year after year. By the end of 2021, the total bank bailout could exceed 100 billion.
Rodrigo Rato, who resigned from the presidency of Bankia in 2012, is still in prison serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for the “black cards” scam, another scam involving opaque credit cards from which former board members and other top managers of Caja Madrid and then of Bankia after the merger with other savings banks sucked in their pockets.
On 12 June 2012, the Congress of Deputies rejected, with the votes of the PP, the creation of a commission to investigate the banking crisis, including the nationalisation of Bankia. The motion by La Izquierda Plural – the result of an interpellation by IU, ICV-EUia, CHA – had 175 votes against (PP), 15 abstentions (CiU) and the support of the rest of the groups (139 votes) that have been in favour of investigating the causes of the crisis in the financial sector.
In 2017, PP and PSOE agreed to delay a commission of enquiry into banking that was never heard of again.
Another chapter of neoliberalism that is closing in a shameful way, led and supported by the previous right-wing tycoons and finished off by a government that claims to be progressive, reformist, social and all that. Losses are socialised and profits are privatised with public money. The same old story.
The jibber-jabber is not over yet. As a final touch, the smiling photo of any of those who have made possible this macro-scam that ruined many families sitting at the table of the board of directors of the merged companies is still missing.
and how did the merger go? Well, it was great.
Caixabank proposed an ERE to get rid of more or less 8,291 employees, 19% of the workforce in Spain. The company was preparing to close 27% of its branches, some 1,534.
and what did the media mouthpieces of those banks that have conquered their boards of directors and direct the pens of their scribes say?
Well, that, thanks to the merger, Caixabank had become “Spain’s banking leader”. A triumph. The best bank. We were “Top”. Spain was now among the elite of Europe’s money-grabbers.
To more layoffs, more profits y more money for their managers and cronies. They avoided talking about bloody layoffs or job destruction, using the now normalised neo-language; reduction or adjustment, they called it in their headlines.
CaixaBank assured that the ERE was due to synergies and market needs and was “necessary” because of the duplicities after the merger. That’s how clueless they are. It wasn’t until all the assets were brought together that they realised that by merging the two companies they would now own, in addition to the surplus furniture, many more people who were suddenly “duplicated”.
