Making Me Pay For My Crimes Would Send “Message of Uncertainty to the Markets”: Bank President to Spanish Judge

By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET.

“It’s just a matter of time before injustice prevails…”

A Spanish judge by the name of Fernando Andreu recently violated one of the most important unwritten rules of global finance: namely, that banks and bankers are effectively immune to all laws of all lands (barring, of course, Iceland). As I reported roughly 10 days ago, Andreu had ordered Bankia, its parent company state-owned BFA, the bank’s former chairman, Rodrigo Rato, and three other former directors to pay an €800 million civil liability bond for signing off on fraudulent financial statements in the run up to the bank’s 2011 IPO.

If the defendants fail to cough up the full amount before March 13th, the authorities will embargo assets belonging to them with the equivalent market value. With the clock ticking down and the days flying by, it was just a matter of time before the defendants hit back – and hard!

The Banker Alibi

The first to hit back was Rodrigo Rato, the bank’s former chairman and one-time IMF president. In a 75-page notice of appeal that was leaked to the Spanish press, Rato cautioned that Judge Andreu’s “premature” decision to force the six defendants to compensate the thousands of shareholders they are accused of defrauding could end up provoking a “much greater evil” than that it is supposed to address.

In the worst case scenario, the document warns, it could send a “message of uncertainty to the markets,” which could in turn exert downward pressure (otherwise known as gravity) on the already semi-defunct bank’s share price. This is not the first time that a panicked banker has used this argument; indeed, it is the preferred alibi of all 21st-century banking racketeers.

The argument is simple:

Don’t touch me, or the bank gets it. And if the bank gets it, so will everyone else.

Spain’s economy minister (and former Lehman Brothers advisor) Luis de Guindos recently adopted a similar line of reasoning: if taxpayers wanted to claw back any of the billions of euros they had (involuntarily) poured into Bankia’s black holes, the best chance they had of doing so would be to sell the public-private entity at the highest possible price. In other words, no actions should be taken that could undermine its share price – actions such as, say, fining the bank or its former executives for “misleading” shareholders out of billions of euros.

A Fragile Game of Confidence

The one thing Rato does get right is that the apportioning of blame for Bankia’s collapse should be much more evenly spread out (although this in no way excuses him of engaging in the criminal acts of fraud and deception of which he’s accused). As Rato reminds both investors and voters, Bankia’s public launch “was not a whimsical decision” taken by its chief executives, but was the inevitable result of regulatory changes at the beginning of 2011.

What’s more, Spain’s financial regulators, the CNMV, and its central bank, the Bank of Spain, closely monitored Bankia’s progress before, during and after its allegedly fraudulent IPO. According to Rato, the CNMV even played an active role in drawing up the bank’s lie-infested IPO brochure.

As anyone who followed these events should be able to recall, everybody (the Government, regulators, the financial sector as a whole) had an economic stake in Bankia’s successful public launch. After all, confidence in the Spanish financial system depended on it.

And to a great extent it still does. Investing is – and always has been – one humongous confidence game. As long as enough investors believe that the assets underpinning the economy actually have the “official” value they are apportioned, everything is rosy. However, the moment that doubt and uncertainty creep into the equation – as happened during Bankia’s last collapse, when the bank’s auditors Deloitte refused to sign off on its accounts – that confidence can evaporate very quickly.

No Country for Good Judges

That Rato is prepared to jeopardize public confidence in Bankia’s financial health – and by extension, Spain’s phantom economic recovery – is illustrative of the stakes involved in this very dangerous game of political and judicial brinkmanship. Not only are his personal finances on the line; so, too, is his personal freedom. If he’s found guilty of the crimes of which he’s accused (fraud, misstating earnings, misuse of credit card privileges), he could face up to 10 years in prison.

Curiously, if he were sent to prison (granted, a massive “if”), Rato would be following in the footsteps of both his father and uncle, who spent three years in prison in the late sixties for illegally channeling client funds through their family bank, Banco de Siera, to a private bank in Switzerland. In a police operation that would be wholly unimaginable today, the two brothers were arrested during the no-expenses-spared wedding of Rodrigo Rato’s sister, María de los Ángeles Rato Figaredo, with Emilio García Botín, the nephew of Spain’s recently deceased banking godfather Emilio Botín.

It is indeed a sign of our times that in Spain’s post-Franco democracy the senior figures of the financial establishment enjoy even greater immunity from the law than they did during Franco’s brutal dictatorship. At least during the dictatorship, wayward bankers occasionally saw the inside of a prison cell. By contrast, today’s senior bankers hardly ever see the inside of a court room. Indeed, the last Spanish judge (a man by the name of Elpidio Silva) who tried to punish a senior banker for his frontline role in the country’s financial crisis was himself expelled from the bench for over 17 years.

Silva’s fate should serve as a stark warning to Judge Andreu as he takes on the combined forces of Spain’s financial, political and highly politicized legal establishment. Given the stakes at hand – not only for Rato but also for the Spanish economy and the governing Peoples Party, for whom Rato once served as vice-president and economy minister – it’s probably only a matter of time before injustice is served once again. By Don Quijones, Raging Bull-Shit.

Have banks gotten tired to seeing their actions show up in the media? You bet. And they creeping all over the media to control the message, often successfully so. But it doesn’t always work out. Read…  As Banks Tighten Grip on the Media, British Journalist Rebels Against HSBC-Run Telegraph

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  13 comments for “Making Me Pay For My Crimes Would Send “Message of Uncertainty to the Markets”: Bank President to Spanish Judge

  1. Ivan says:

    The Star Chamber is needed for today’s world.

  2. Dave Mac says:

    How dare anybody be charged and convicted just because they are guilty!

  3. retired says:

    One request that I would like to make,
    If this guy,Ratso,is put in jail,…..can Jamie Dimon also be put into his cell?

  4. Paulo says:

    Which is better, pitchforks, tar and feathers + rail, garrote, prison, or all of the above? Oh, I forgot forfeiture of all assets and the lash. Humiliation wouldn’t do any good, nor embarassment. These mokes aren’t normal feeling people. They pretend to be, but they are good at pretending to be human when it suits them.

  5. AC says:

    When are they being hanged?

  6. Ian says:

    They know how to deal with crooked bankers in Iran. Once convicted, simply lop their head off. It serves as an effective deterrent to fraud and corruption.

  7. Logikal1 says:

    The movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ shows how the financial game’s rigged to not just allow, but actively encourage criminal activities in today’s modern banking & investment industry. The modern system’s practically begging people to steal. Insiders distrust anyone trying to do the right thing for clients instead of filling their own pockets, clearing them out whenever found.

    With legal checks and balances removed thanks to billions poured into influencing lawmakers in every country (especially the US which sets the ‘standards’ ), through lobbying & outright bribes, & with moral checks and balances no longer a factor (30% of 21st century Western adults have no belief in a higher power, 40% more are ‘lukewarm’) investment bankers are like kids in a candy store. They gobble up everything in sight, and despite a few tummy aches [legal woes] from over-indulgence keep eating everything they on which they can lay their grubby hands.

    Judge Andreu did the right thing, but sadly it will have no effect at all on the other thieves. Until voters [worldwide] throw out every lawmaker who sells out to these con men & new legislatures reinstate the rules & regs that kept bankers from treating their jobs like an all-you-can-steal buffet the spree won’t stop.

    ]What’s going on in this century’s exactly what went on in the 1920’s. Financial finagling & excesses led to the stock market crash of ’29 & subsequent world-wide Depression. 60% of people in every sector lost their livelihoods & savings. The Depression lasted over a decade & only by passing strict banking laws (and getting into a war) was the US able to finally regain it’ s financial footing. Unfortunately we don’t include this in our schools so few realize it CAN & WILL happen again if we continue on our downhill slide_).

    One desperately needed change is a rule banning ALL gratuities, incentives, gifts etc. to lawmakers in any form while in office. Lawmakers must also be banned from taking (hugely overpaid) jobs with ‘benefactors’ for a minimum of 5 years after leaving office. This would remove incentives to pass legislation for a group simply because you’re taking their money. Right now? If you’ve go a few hundred thousand lying around you can buy any law you want. (The more damaging the law, the more ya gotta pay out, but hey, it’s worth it!)

    Examples of this type of buy-your-own-laws wheeling & dealing permeate every layer of government today. In 38 states, for example, the powerful nursing home lobby’s gotten laws passed which allow aides -not licensed nurses – to pass medications. This saves the owners of homes millions when experienced nurses [$18 -$30/hr ] are replaced by aides ($9 -$16] w/6wks training in feeding & dressing only to do THE most dangerous job an RN/LPN has, hands down. The estimated quarter-million seniors who pay with their lives are quickly replaced by new admissions.

    Since homes don’t report deaths to the coroner if a patient’s been in-house more than 24hrs, errors & homicide [by keeping the patient’ meds for personal use or sale] are rarely caught. The chance of a lawsuit’s virtually nil so there’s no downside for owners.

    Until people wake up, laws change & more judges are willing to send these crooks to prison, confiscating every dollar they’ve got in order to compensate the countless victims of these modern robber barons don’t expect things to change. Millions lose their life’ savings, pay outrageous interest (usury laws banning interest rates over 20% were quietly repealed 30 yrs ago) & suffer while these sharks continue their feeding frenzy.

    (Just an aside, dontcha almost feel sorry for all the non-bankers doing 20-to-life for loan-sharking simply because they forgot to do it legally? Today’s legal loan sharks do so openly, charging over 300% interest per annum. We call them ‘PayDay Loan Centers.”

  8. EU bonus cap says:

    “Top Welsh Tory under fire after telling bankers furious about the EU bonus cap to be ‘innovative… to get around it’”

    http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/top-welsh-tory-under-fire-8696757

  9. Phil says:

    This is the most vile and disgusting thing I’ve heard in a long time…make them pay for crimes or this pattern will repeat 10 fold.

  10. SteveK9 says:

    Podemos could change a lot of this. We’ll have to see.

    Most people think Syriza in Greece has already caved to the malefactors of great wealth, but it is early innings yet.

    It’s very hard to imagine Spain going on with 25% (60% youth) unemployment indefinitely. The only surprise is that there hasn’t been a revolution yet.

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