The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has archived the case that investigated the capital increase of Banco Popular in 2012, understanding that the Bank of Spain endorsed the operation and the brochure reflected the true image of the entity, and contributed to the good progress of the bank until its resolution in 2017.
In an order dated this Friday to which EFE has had access, Pedraz decrees the filing of the case opened against the former president of the bank Ángel Ron, the former vice president of the entity Roberto Higuera, and the PwC auditor who reviewed the 2012 accounts, José María Sanz Oliva.
The decision comes four days after the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama prosecuted former president Ron, twelve directors and the auditing firm PwC on March 4 for the 2016 capital increase.
Last November, Pedraz already filed the case but the Court urged him to reopen it to carry out pending proceedings; Now, in his order, the magistrate points out that said proceedings “are not appropriate because they clearly exceed the scope of the investigation, and if carried out they would not provide any relevant data to the case.”
These are not essential procedures, nor do they serve to avoid or exclude criminal evidence, he adds.
Among the evidence requested by the plaintiffs, the witness statement of the deputy governor of the Bank of Spain, Margarita Delgado, stands out; the former governor of the organization Luis María Linde and the former vice president of the European Commission, Joaquín Almunia.
The case, the judge clarifies, has taken more than two years of investigation and from the analysis of the expert report presented by the inspectors of the Bank of Spain, which has also been ratified in court at the request of the parties, “the lack of typicality is deduced criminal in the events under investigation”.
There may have been deficiencies in the 2012 capital increase by Banco Popular, but from this “it does not follow the existence of manipulation of the accounting and economic situation of the entity to promote an erroneous image of its financial statements.”
It had also been requested that the experts from the Bank of Spain ratify their reports again, and in this regard Pedraz says that it is not appropriate to clarify “any of the aspects analyzed”, since no new issues have been observed from said expert ratification that should be evaluated.
According to the prosecutor’s office, in the ratification of the expert report that was carried out on February 6, 2024, the experts from the Bank of Spain indicated “that they had been able to have all the information necessary to prepare the opinion, both for the documentation that was given to them at the beginning of the case, as well as the documentation that they requested from the court.
Although the private accusations maintain that the report is incomplete, “that is not what the experts understood,” the order indicates, hence their decision to dismiss the case.