It was never clarified where the 1,345 million pesetas (more than six million euros) in loans that disappeared in the Caja Rural de Cantabria between 1977 and 1981 had gone. Nor did anyone pay for it: neither was the money returned nor was there any responsible. The 25 defendants blamed a dead person: the entity’s own director, Tomás Mier, who opportunely died for the interests of the accused six years before the trial.
An inspection by the Bank of Spain uncovered a major scandal in Cantabria in 1981. The entity had uncollectible debts of 1,345 million pesetas due to the lightness with which credits had been authorized without requiring guarantees. Some of them, in addition, to politicians, such as UCD deputies Justo de las Cuevas and his family – who received 600 million pesetas in loans – and Roberto Sáez, a builder and former CEOE leader, along with local businessmen and up to two agricultural cooperatives that never existed, but, even so, received 200 million pesetas. The Territorial Union of Rural Cooperatives (Uteco) also benefited with 250 million pesetas. Its manager was the director of Caja Rural himself, Tomás Mier. Everyone received the money, but they did not return it in installments as they should have.
To denounce the events, a Commission was created to monitor irregularities made up of the agricultural unions, the union centers of Cantabria and three political parties: PSOE, PCE and the PRC of Miguel Ángel Revilla, who filed a criminal complaint against the director of the entity.
The entity had uncollectible debts of 1,345 million pesetas due to the lightness with which credits had been authorized without requiring guarantees. Some of them politicians
Meanwhile, the Bank of Spain dismissed the entire Board of Directors and dismissed the director, who filed a claim for unfair dismissal in which he requested compensation of 30 million pesetas, which was rejected. The entity was intervened by the National Consortium of Rural Savings Banks, which also did nothing to recover the unpaid loans.
Subsequently, it was decided to elect another board of directors of the entity. But, after an inspection, the Ministry of Labor considered that 15 of the 34 member cooperatives of the Caja Rural de Cantabria could not participate in the election of the governing council because they were ghost companies used to cover up some of the irregularities committed by the previous managers of the the entity.
The former UCD deputy and then socialist activist, Ciriaco Díaz Porras, was elected president to clean up the entity. Years later, the Court of Accounts discovered that for four years he was charging 20,000 pesetas a day in improper fees, even after being required by the Bank of Spain to stop doing so and refund the money.
Some time later, in 1985, the Government of Cantabria decreed the intervention of Caja Rural and Díaz Porras refused to deliver the documentation to regional officials and the matter ended up in the Constitutional Court. A process that is part of the power struggles waged by political parties for control of the Fund.
Two years later, in 1987, the Bank of Spain intervened in the entity – still chaired by Díaz Porras, who by then was also president of the Board of Directors of the newspaper ALERTA – and proposed its dissolution or sale. Later, the Agricultural Credit Bank came to the rescue to revive a bankrupt entity that continued to lose deposits from its clients due to the lack of confidence it generated. Finally, Caixa and Caja Madrid bought Caja Rural de Cantabria and a month later it was dissolved, in January 1988, after having received 3,225 million in public funds, insufficient to keep it alive.
Judicial process
Justice took it more calmly. A year and a half passed until the director and the president of the Council, Amós Fernández, along with four other directors, were prosecuted, accused of crimes of falsehood and misappropriation. They asked them for million-dollar bail to avoid going to jail and a solidarity deposit of 300 million pesetas.
A few hours after they testified in court, three senior managers of Caja Rural attacked the president of the bank’s works council, Javier Mena. They beat him and threw him to the ground in the lobby of Caja Rural at the end of his work day. Minutes before, another group of managers, including the director of the Torrelavega office and mayor of Cabuérniga, José María Mier, had been visiting the other complainants to verbally threaten them.
Three senior managers of Caja Rural attacked the president of the bank’s works committee, Javier Mena. They beat him and threw him to the ground in the lobby of Caja Rural at the end of his work day.
The prosecutor prosecuted 27 people and requested for Justo de las Cuevas, then president of the Agriculture Commission of the Congress of Deputies during the UCD mandate, four years of minor prison for a crime of misappropriation and another two for falsifying documents. public. He considered him the true promoter of the operation, with the connivance of the director of the Fund, Tomás Mier, who allowed him to finance the companies of his group at the expense of that entity’s assets. They did it through loans that were never satisfied.
In the end, everything came to nothing. The only one convicted of the 25 accused was the then mayor of the Ramales City Council, Fermín Gómez Seña. He was sentenced to two months in prison for obtaining 28 million pesetas in credits that he did not return. The scandal that occupied the front pages and pages of newspapers for years was settled without resolving who was responsible for the loans that, in reality, were money given to some influential beneficiaries of the political and business elite of Cantabria.
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