The former Vice President of Bankia denies accounting irregularities in the group: «If the Bank of Spain did not know about it ...»

The former Vice President of Bankia denies accounting irregularities in the group: «If the Bank of Spain did not know about it ...»

Olivas complains that "he is not the auditor of the auditor" and argues that if the supervisor "said that we had provisions to spare, it would have been foolish to contradict him"

   The Bank of Spain has become a kind of wild card for those accused of the controversial IPO of Bankia in July 2011 and the alleged falsification of its annual accounts, at least for those who held positions of greater responsibility. The recourse to that letter has been such that José Luis Olivas , who was vice president of the financial group emerged from the merger of Caja Madrid and Bancaja among other savings entities, shielded on Tuesday the responsibility of that as a supervisory body to deny any hint of accounting or financial problem.

"It is difficult for us to know something that the Bank of Spain did not know." With this affirmation Olivas obtained that the court of the National Hearing that judges to old dome of Bankia prevented the anticorruption public prosecutor Carmen Launa , to insist on its line of interrogation on the balance sheets of the bank. Of course, he was able to ask several questions before, but in almost all he found different types of evasions from this financially minted ex-politician, who became the president of Bancaja after being the head of the Valencian Government and the PP's top position in that community.

Although the Public Prosecutor's Office was not very satisfied during the investigation with the conclusions of the two inspectors of the Bank of Spain who acted as judicial experts, this time it did resort several times to its reports. He did it, for example, to ask who was 'number two' of Bankia for the high cost of restructuring the templates that had the seven boxes that made up the group: 1,385 million euros in early retirement. This expense was charged against reserves and not directly on the annual results, which in the opinion of both experts involved hiding relevant information, also to the shareholders.

The prosecutor shares this criterion and asked Olivas why this was done. His answer, expected to a large extent, was again to shield himself in the supervisory body. And is that, according to a report of March 2010 says that "it is indifferent to charge against results or against reserves." Therefore, he emphasized, "from the point of view of the Bank of Spain it was well done, just as from the point of view of the auditor it was also well done". "We had no doubt," he concluded.

But Launa, not satisfied, returned to the charge. "What would have happened if the seven savings banks had lost ?", What would have happened of counting "well" that multimillion-dollar expenditure in template adjustments and thus offering "a faithful picture of their financial status " -the red numbers, according to the Experts, they would have shot up to 1,015 million euros. "But they did not give losses," replied the former Vice President of Bankia, who did not even answer the question of whether that would have frustrated the merger.

The court 'marks' the prosecutor

It was not that part of the interrogation because the president of the court, Ángela Murillo , severely cut the prosecutor: "That is already answered." It was not the first time that both clashed, and probably will not be the last. Before her month off, and on the occasion of the declaration of Rodrigo Rato , the veteran magistrate called attention to Launa several times - also to the former president of the bank. This Tuesday something similar happened again, reprimanding the first to the second because of its lack of specificity. "But, what is the question?", Came to question him several times.

Its most severe shock , however, was the occasion of the questions about Banco de Valencia, whose financial problems would explain, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, a good part of the subsequent bad situation of Bancaja, which had it as one of its investees, and by extension of Bankia. The prosecutor asked Olivas if his accounts were put at fair value, to which he answered in a negative way since it was not part of the asset protection system that the savings banks signed, "nor merged with anyone."

At Launa's insistence, the former Bankia manager said angrily that "I'm not the auditor of the auditor." He noted that in one of his conversations with the deputy governor ( Javier Aríztegui ) they spoke about the topic "and did not warn me of any difficulty". "If the Bank of Spain told me that we had extra provisions, it would have been foolish to contradict it." He did not give up that part of the interrogation because Judge Murillo cut them again: "do not abound in that line", he went to the prosecutor, "Banco de Valencia is not part of this procedure - his specific situation was left out by order of the court after the previous questions-, ask the following question ».