The former president of Banco Popular, Ángel Ron, will have to go to trial for the entity’s capital increase in 2016, an operation to which investors would have gone “deceived since the financial statements of that year and 2015 did not reflect the faithful image of the balance sheet or assets,” explains José Luis Calama, investigating judge of the case at the National Court, in his order.
Along with him, ten other bank executives will also sit on the bench (including Francisco Gómez, who was CEO of the bank) and, as necessary collaborators, the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and two of the latter’s auditors.
Thus, the Criminal Chamber of the Court, which will be in charge of the prosecution, collects the qualification documents of the fourteen accusations that have been presented in this case and that classify the facts as crimes of accounting falsehood and a continuing crime of fraud. investors.
The bail has been above 2,000 million euros, an astronomical amount and in line with what the accusations requested, although the instructor has warned that the figure is provisional since some of the accusations have not specified their request.
As the magistrate recalled today in a statement, the purpose of setting a bond is to ensure the execution of the pronouncements of a civil nature and with patrimonial content of the sentence handed down. In this sense, the magistrate has rejected the precautionary measures raised by the accusations, as he explained, because he has taken into account the economic and financial solvency of Santander, PwC and the insurers.
Regarding Banco Santander, which bought Popular in 2017, the judge has rejected the opening of an oral trial as a lucrative participant, although he has indicated that its position as subsidiary civil party must be maintained as it is the universal successor of the entity whose former -directors now go to trial.
In the case of PwC, which had not been accused by the Prosecutor’s Office but was accused of the rest of the accusations (except the consumer organization OCU), the judge has indicated that it will have to respond in a subsidiary manner in relation to the facts for which The two auditors of that company are accused. All of this, without prejudice to the direct responsibility of the consultant as an accused.
Thus, Calama has rejected the incidental questions of prior ruling that Pwc had raised after learning the content of the documents of the different accusations, due to an alleged lack of legitimacy of some of the injured parties who appear in the case.
Regarding this, Calama has explained that “the intended procedure has no place in the present procedure and that the accused party, PwC, under the umbrella of article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law cannot bring genuinely established procedures into the criminal process at will. for the civil procedure, since the procedures for the abbreviated procedure are perfectly defined in articles 780 et seq. of the LeCRim,” the letter reads.
Furthermore, the judge found that the injured parties referred to by PwC have appeared as individuals throughout the lengthy investigation, without the auditor having made any appeal or raising any question about their lack of standing, and therefore considers that the request is “extravagant and untimely.” He adds that PwC’s silence during the investigation, in relation to this issue, is “merely the responsibility of its lawyers.”
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